Mr. Howard Saunders's View. 57 



eggs of the cuckoo were as liberally laid among 

 clutches of a wholly different colour, as they are now, 

 English ornithologists could have gone on from the 

 days of Jenner down to those of Seebohm and Elwes 

 — about a whole century — -and denied that any cuckoo 

 whatever laid blue eggs. It is almost incomprehen- 

 sible that such a condition of things could have gone 

 on — unless indeed the facts were different in the past 

 from what they are now and have been for several 

 recent years, when one of the most extraordinary 

 things has been the appearance of cuckoos' blue eggs 

 not with blue eggs, but with eggs of all other and con- 

 trasted colours, even in the nest of the nightingale. 

 If this had been so invariably for nigh a hundred 

 years, what utterly blind bogglers English ornitholo- 

 gists must indeed have been ! 



Further still, Mr. Howard Saunders says (right in 

 teeth of Dr. Bowdler Sharpe's deliverance above) that 

 eggs of a pale blue have been found, though not 

 invariably located, in nests of the hedge-sparrow and 

 redstart.'' 



If you go strictly for a blue-egg-laying cuckoo as 

 having come from the nest of a blue-egg-laying bird, 

 always laying its eggs in a nest where blue eggs are, 

 how do you account for the very, very large number 

 in proportion of blue eggs laid beside other coloured 

 eggs, making in many cases very motley groups ? 

 And if, like the hedge-sparrow, there are whole species 

 that are easily taken in, and will bear any amount of 

 interference with their nests — birds which are every- 

 where numerous — why should the cuckoo need to 



* Manual, p. 278. Mr. Saunders writes in new edition of 

 1897-8, " though these have not invariably been located." 



