77 
in European Oology. 
doubt from the stain which is attached to the character of our 
well-known species. Mr. Tristram, although inclining to the 
belief that the C. glandarius rears its own young ones, acknow¬ 
ledges that the eggs are so like those of a magpie of the country, 
in the nest of which it lays them, that the eggs of the two birds 
for a time passed his critical eye, and were labeled as those of 
one and the same species. The eggs are certainly well-adapted 
to represent those of a magpie, but are still more like those of 
our own thrushes. That represented in fig. 2 is a facsimile of 
the egg of the blackbird, both in size and colour. That in fig. 1, 
except that it is larger, would pass- for the egg of the ring-ouzel. 
Mr. Tristram says, “ In our expedition of the spring of 1857, 
we were fortunate enough to pitch our tents, for upwards of 
three weeks, in a valley between two of the southern spurs of 
the Eastern Atlas range, which proved to be one of the very few 
breeding localities of the Great Spotted Cuckoo as yet dis¬ 
covered in North Africa. In the middle of May we had no¬ 
ticed it several times, but could obtain no clue to its breeding- 
habits, until one day I had extended a long ride as far as a 
French outpost, when an officer showed me a Cuckoo he had 
just skinned, and gave me an egg he had taken from the ovary 
ready for deposition. He told me that in a certain wood near 
our camp he had in former years taken nests, and had never, 
during a fifteen years’ residence in Africa, observed the bird in 
any other district, and that even here it seemed confined to 
very narrow limits. Within a very few days after this a nest 
rewarded our search, containing a single egg ready to hatch 
(May 20th): the nest was in the top of a tree in the forest. 
After this we found several other nests. I am aware that 
M. Brehm*, who has described the habits of this bird in Nubia, 
attributes to it the same evasion of domestic duties of which our 
C. canorus is guilty, and states that it makes use of the nests 
of the Corvidae, whose eggs its own in some degree resemble as 
to colouring. But, as far as my own observation goes, I cannot 
concur in the accusation of its use of a foundling hospital, further 
than that I believe it does appropriate and repair the deserted 
* See Cabanis* Journal fur Ornithologie, 1853, p. 144, and Zoolo¬ 
gist, xx. 3987* 
