48 
As I have previously pointed out, in a communication to the Wellington Philosophical Society 
(November 12, 1870), among the substances used as building-materials by this bird, spiders nests are 
always conspicuous ; indeed, in some specimens, the whole exterior surface is covered with them. 
The particular web chosen for this purpose is an adhesive cocoon of loose texture and of dull green 
colour. These spiders’ nests contain a cluster of flesh-coloured eggs or young ; and in tearing them 
off the bird necessarily exposes the contents, which it eagerly devours. Thus, while engaged in 
collecting the requisite building-material, it finds also a plentiful supply of food an economy of time 
and labour very necessary to a bird that requires to build a nest fully ten times its own size, and to 
rear the Cuckoo’s offspring in addition to its own. Curiously enough, the biid uses only the green- 
coloured nests of Epeira verrucosa, and i*ejects the orange-coloured nests of E. antipodiana. I think 
this may be explained on the principle of assimilative or protective colouring. Diy freshwater alga; 
are sometimes used for binding the exterior and giving additional firmness to the structure. 
In the Canterbury Museum there is a beautiful nest of this species, composed almost wholly of 
sheeps’ wool intermixed with soft dry leaves. It is almost globular in shape, with the enhance near 
the top, and is lightly suspended from a branch of Leptospermum. There is also another of much 
larger size, composed of wool and spiders’ nests, with fragments of cotton and twine cm d ull) intei 
woven, and furnished with a hoodless vestibule or porch, composed of fibrous rootlets; the tlneshold 
is unusually deep and firm, probably because of the very yielding materials of which the nest is built. 
Another series presents some curious departures from the normal type, showing that the exact 
form of the nest is often the result of accident, the structure being adapted to the materials of which 
it happens to be composed and to the circumstances of its location. The subjoined woodcuts may 
help to illustrate the subject. Fig. 1 represents a nest of larger size than usual, and of a long 
elliptical shape, which exhibits the uncommon feature of several soft Emu-feathers, worked into the 
felting among the other building-materials. Fig. 2 shows a nest of the ordinary form, ornamented 
with the long dry leaves of the red gum ( Eucalyptus rostrata ), around and among which the neat 
structure is most cleverly built. In fig. 3 there is a manifest departure from the typical character 
exhibited in fig. 4. Lastly, fig. 5 shows the condition of the nest after the young Cuckoo usurper 
has pulled it out of shape and symmetry. Four is the normal number of eggs, although there are 
sometimes six. They differ somewhat in size; and in shape are ovoido-conical or slightly pyriform. 
They are sometimes pure white, but more generally freckled and marked with purplish brown, and are 
so fragile in texture as to bear only the most delicate handling. Ordinary specimens measure ‘7 of an 
inch in length by - 5 in breadth. I have remarked that among the highly variable eggs of this species 
several distinct types may be recognized, and that all the eggs in one nest are invariably alike. Thus 
there is the spotted variety, in which the whole surface is studded with scattered dots of purplish brown ; 
secondly, the freckled variety, in which the coloration is more diffuse; and, thirdly, the zoned variety, 
presenting a broad zone of colour near the thick end. Two examples, taken from a nest which con- 
tained also an egg of the Shining Cuckoo, had the thick end broadly capped with reddish brown. 
