134 Darwin and Romanes dealt with. 



used of all, should be almost invariably omitted from 

 our published lists." 



Mr. Norgate has made one very remarkable dis- 

 covery, which is cited by Mr. Gurney in his paper. 

 He has noticed in reed-warblers' nests, where cuckoos' 

 eggs were laid, cuckoos' feathers woven into the out- 

 side and bottom of the nest ; and his notion is that 

 these are put there by the cuckoos themselves to 

 accustom the reed-warblers to the smell, as they have 

 not been met with in other nests. This would indi- 

 cate that particular methods and expedients have to 

 be resorted to by the cuckoos in the case of the reed- 

 warblers. 



Mr. Gurney's own explanation of the undoubted 

 tendency of some cuckoos, in certain circumstances, 

 to hang about nests has a bearing here. He thinks 

 that this is done more especially when the egg has 

 not been properly matched. One case, he cites, was 

 that of a reddish egg in the nest of a reed-warbler ; 

 and there the cuckoo " was close at hand, perhaps 

 from a consciousness of the wrong colour, which 

 rendered her anxious." 



And he has this further reflection on this matter : 



" If the foster-bird is not quite happy with the 

 splendid usurping egg, which she is deluded into the 

 belief that she herself has laid, she will perhaps move 

 it from one side of the nest to the other, and, if there 

 is reason to think it unfertile, ultimately bury it in 

 the lining of the nest, rejected. In June, 1879, Mr. 

 Norgate saw a cuckoo's egg, in Hockering Wood, on 

 the ground beside a tree-pipit's nest, which egg had 

 some hours before been seen to be in the nest ; and 



