2o6 The World-Evidence. 



Has this, in more recent years, been systematically 

 done ? And is it now an absolutely settled point 

 that the big, most magnificent, large-billed Scythrops 

 Navce-Hollanda is parasitic with its monster eggs ; 

 and, if so, which are the birds on whom it manages 

 to impose such an egg ? Mr. Gould speaks of it, as 

 we have seen, positively , at one place as parasitic; 

 but in another he is doubtful. It is clearly ascer- 

 tained, however, that this bird, though it migrates, 

 does not migrate very far, as it had not, when Mr. 

 Gould wrote, been seen out of Australia, nor even 

 on the north coast of that country. "•!' So far as mi- 

 gration is concerned, the same thing, according to 

 Mr. Gould, applies to the ash-coloured cuckoo (C«- 

 culus cineraceus). The shining cuckoo is the smallest 

 of the Australian cuckoos, and mostly deposits its 

 eggs in domed nests, with a very small hole for an 

 entrance. The egg of this species is eleven-sixteenths 

 of an inch long by half an inch in breadth. The 

 brush cuckoos of Australia [Cuculus insperatus) are 

 important, because, more clearly than any other 

 variety, they unite the genus Cuculus with the Chal- 

 cites. 



Now, one of the most important questions that 

 arises is the fact of Scythrops being parasitic. If it 

 is, with such an egg, what is its process, and what 

 are the birds victimised by it ? Clearly it has not yet, 

 through any long process, reduced its egg below the 



* Captain G. E. Shelley, in his exhaustive and most valuable 

 section of the British Museum Catalogue of Birds (1891). gives 

 as the area of the giant Scythrops Nova-Hollanda — " Australia, 

 New Guinea, Duke of York Island, New Britain, Ke Islands, 

 Bouru, Obi, Batchian, Ternate, Ceram, Celebes, and Flores." 



