124 



On certain Peculiarities in the 



Feeling keenly, as I do, the startling nature of this bold statement, 

 and the scepticism it is likely to call forth, I will not linger over 

 it with any comments of my own, but proceed at once to give a 

 short resume of the article in question. 



Dr. Baldamus begins his paper by calling attention to the great 

 variety in colouring as well as in marking in a collection of Cuckoo's 

 eggs, and the astonishing resemblance these eggs severally bear to 

 the eggs of a variety of small birds usually chosen as the foster 

 parents of Cuckoos : a fact which he says was well known to the 

 great ornithologists and oologists of Germany, including Naumann, 

 Thienemann, Brehm, Gloger, von Homeyer and others, and I may 

 add that this point was equally well known to our British orni- 

 thologists as well. 1 But Dr. Baldamus seems to have been the first 

 to suspect that at the root of this striking phenomenon there was 

 a fixed law, perhaps a law which might be discoverable : and his 

 suspicions in this direction having been aroused, he proceeded to 

 pay diligent attention to the subject. To this end he not only 

 made most careful personal observations, but by means of oological 

 correspondents in various parts of Germany, collected a large series 

 of facts bearing upon the matter, which were convincing to his 

 own mind : convictions which seem to have been shared in by 

 many of the leading ornithologists of Germany. I will not 

 weary the patience of members of this Society by taking them 

 through the several instances which Dr. Baldamus details ; but 

 pass on at once to the results he arrived at, merely remarking by 

 the way, that he followed up his investigations with such earnest 

 zeal, that when he wrote his paper, he had before him no less than 

 one hundred Cuckoo's eggs, special care being taken to ascertain 

 accurately from the nest of what particular species every one of 

 these eggs was taken. 



Now the first thing which Dr. Baldamus established to his own 

 satisfaction, by means of these repeated observations, was, that the 

 Cuckoo lays its eggs in the nests of no less than thirty-seven species, 

 including not only every species of Chat, Warbler, Wagtail, Pipit, 

 and Lark, but even exceptionally certain of the grain-eating 

 1 Wood's Illustrated Natural History, vol. ii., p. 572. 



