212 
XATi'RE XOTES 
665 . Cuckoos eating Eggs. — Mr. Daubeny, writing in the October 
number of Nature Notes, says that the “antiquated belief” of cuckoos feeding 
on eggs has been absolutely disproved. I should like to refer him to a paper 
read October 26, 1897, by the celebrated authority, J. H. Gurney, F.Z.S., before 
the Norfolk and Norwich Naturalists’ Society, on “The Economy of the 
Cuckoo ” (published in the Transactions of that Society, vol. vi.), in which 
reference is made to an article in The Field of January 28, 1882, under the initials 
N. L. \V. (my father). There he remaiks : “ On skinning it (the cuckoo) I found 
the crop full of a mash of egg-shells. I carefully e.vamined this mash and succeeded 
in separating the broken shells, held together by the inside skin, ol at least seven 
tw'o of which were robins’, and the rest either hedge-sparrows’ or thrushes’, 
or some bluish eggs.” Mary F. Wilson. 
Selby IVood, Selby Oak, Birmingham, October 10, 1908. 
666. Night-jar and. Chaffinch.- case has been reported to me of 
a night-jar carrying a chaffinch in its bill. An account of this was sent to some 
sporting paper and the “ facts” were said to be “ undoubted.” I venture humbly 
to di.sagree, as those who know the history and habits of night-jars are sure to 
do. These birds, often called “ night-hasuks," are purely insect-eaters, and 
hawk about in the evening for moths, beetles, and the like. They sometimes are 
to be seen on the wing in the daytime, and when so seen five persons out of six 
would mistake them for members of the hawk tribe. A friend wbo constantly 
corresponds with me on matters connected with ornithology, to whom I related 
the circumstance, says, I don’t believe in the night-jar story. One of them was 
about the garden here and my brother-in-law mistook it for a hawk, and was not 
convinced until I showed him the bird sitting long-ways on a Scotch fit branch,” 
Edmund Thos. Daubeny. 
667 . Sand Martins. — A pit here, usually tenanted by sand martins, has 
been deserted, not one having nested there this spring. Last winter the earth 
near their burrows had fallen, and this I supposed to be an insufficient cause for 
their going away. Flowever, they knew better than I, for during the summer the 
earth has fallen in a way that must have been disastrous to their nests if they had 
made them there. Many people will call this a case of instinct (blind, of course). 
To me it is preferable to believe that they were better judges than I of the 
instability of the ground around their old home. Edmund Thos. Daubeny. 
668. House Fly. — One of the results of my memo, in the pages of 
Nature Notes, a month or two back, has been the sending to me, by a friend, 
of the “ Preliminary Report of the Habits, Life Cycle, and Breeding Places of 
the Common House Fly (J/nsca domestica) as observed in the City of Liverpool.” 
It appears that owing to observations, an account of which was published in 
October last year, we “ are now in possession of the more important facts 
relating to the economt- of this pest.” 
The food of the larva consists almost entirely of decayed vegetable matter, 
horse manure, and spent hops especially. It feeds also on “ bread, decayed 
Iruits and vegetables, the excreta of domestic fowls and pigs, and on human 
excreta in ash pits and stable middens,” and is found in the greatest numbers 
where fermentation has taken place, and the temperature of its habit has been 
raised. It does not affect very wet or very dry matter, and is absent from 
receptacles that are cleaned out at short intervals. The barn-door fowl, when 
allowed free access to stables infested by house flies, keeps down their numbers in 
a marked degree by feeding on them in the incipient stages of their existence. 
Edmund Thos. Daubeny, . 
669 . Longevity of Seeds. — In his “ Origin of Cultivated Plants” (1884), 
-\lphonse De Candolle writes ; “No grain taken from an ancient Egyptian 
sarcophagus and sown by horticulturists has ever been known to germinate.” In 
the first volume of Nai'URE Notes (1890, p. 119) the Rev. Professor G. Henslow 
has an article on “Mummy Wheat” to the same effect. He mentions the 
occurrence of seeds of maize in a supposed sample, and explains that on micro- 
scopic examination it is always found that the embryo has perished. Our sixth 
volume (1895) hegths with an article on the same subject, by Mr. Carruthers. 
He alludes to experiments by a Committee of the British Association spread over 
fifteen years and finally reported upon in 1857, and to “ the most authentic case 
