Parasitic Eggs not rare. 143 



increased, — all which goes to prove that the " depo- 

 sition of a parasitic egg is not comparatively an ex- 

 ceedingly rare event." And more than that : if such 

 vast collections of eggs withdrawn does not, in a 

 marked way over a course of years, perceptibly — very 

 perceptibly — diminish the numbers of cuckoos in a 

 given district, then, assuredly, we have here another 

 and most convincing proof that vast numbers of 

 cuckoos' eggs, whether through perfection of match- 

 ing or not, entirely escape, and the notion that the 

 " deposition of a parasitic egg is comparatively an 

 exceedingly rare event " is thus conclusively blown 

 to the winds, as one of the easy, comfortable assump- 

 tions by which late evolutionists get apparent consis- 

 tency in their very ambitious works ! 



When we come on such cases as that described by 

 Herr Braune, where he found, in the oviduct of a 

 cuckoo he had shot, an egg so exactly like that of 

 the icterine warbler's that only by this was he led to 

 recognise as the cuckoo's an exactly similar egg in a 

 warbler's nest ; and that other reported by Herr 

 Grunach, who, in a most abnormally coloured egg, 

 quite unlike the ordinary eggs of the cuckoo, by dis- 

 section undoubtedly found the cuckoo parentage of 

 the bird inside by the zygodactyle feet ; or that of 

 Messrs. Seebohm and Elwes, who decisively estab- 

 lished the fact of cuckoos laying blue eggs by finding 

 the young bird inside a blue egg with zygodactylic 

 feet, we may well be excused implicitly accepting 

 dicta of certain kinds too frequently given us, as 

 though all was practically and satisfactorily explained 

 under certain axioms and theories about the cuckoos 

 and their ways. 



