NOTES AND QUERIES. 75 



tarsus distinct cobalt-blue. The legs and toes would probably be 

 blue whilst the nestlings were very young. Nails umber-brown. 

 The bill has the upper mandible blackish umber, shaded round 

 margin with pale horn-white ; lower mandible obscure horn- 

 white, faintly shaded at end with blackish umber. Gape and inside 

 of bill flesh-white, with a tinge of lemon-yellow at ends. Irides 

 apprently very dark hazel. Eyelids umber-black. 



Mr. Coburn was good enough to send me the bodies imme- 

 diately they were skinned, with labels attached, and the mounted 

 specimens with corresponding labels a few days later ; and I am 

 responsible for the identification of the sexes on the under- 

 standing that the labelling was correct. That this was so, there 

 is, of course, no reason to doubt. 



My correspondent Mr. G. W. Bradshaw sent me, for identifica- 

 tion, a strange egg which had been found in a nest of the Red- 

 backed Shrike (containing also three eggs of the usual grey type), 

 taken at Burwash, Sussex, on May 18th, 1891. It proved, as 

 I expected, to be an egg of the Cuckoo, and was smaller than the 

 Shrike's eggs. The Red-backed Shrike is included in Mr. E. 

 Bidwell's list of birds in whose nests the Cuckoo occasionally 

 deposits her eggs, and it is marked as having been so selected in 

 Great Britain ; but perhaps this additional instance may be 

 worth recording. 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



MAMMALIA. 



White Stoats in Mild Winters. — During the past month I had 

 brought to me a Stoat which was nearly pure white, with the exception of 

 the top of the head and neck, and a very thin line down the middle of the 

 back. Seeing that the change from the summer to the winter dress is due 

 not to any casting of the fur, but to an actual change of colour in the fur 

 itself, generally admitted to be due to the ^action of severe cold, the 

 question naturally arises why the animal should adopt its winter coat 

 during such a very mild season as the present, and I suppose that the 

 answer is, that the phenomenon of change has become to a certain extent 

 hereditary, irrespective of cold ; though, so far as my experience goes, white 

 Stoats are more plentiful in severe winters than in mild ones. — Oxley 

 Grab ii am (Flaxton, York). 



