[To THE EDFIOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."] SIR,—The late Archdeacon
Basil Wilberforce's statement about the cuckoo's eggs in Mr. Hart's museum at Christchurch is quite correct. Mr. Hart has often shown me the "clutches " men- tioned, and the similarity, in colour and marking, of the cuckoo's egg to its surrounding companions is very marked. Mr. Hart's theory, as he explained it to me, was that this simi- larity occurred only when the cuckoo could see the eggs among which she proposed to deposit her own. In a domed nest, such as a wren's, where the eggs were hidden, the likeness did not occur. In Mr. Alfred Newton's Dictionary of Birds, p. 121, he discusses the matter at length, and quotes Dr. Baldanus as a witness to the fact that the cuckoo frequently, if not invariably, lays eggs resembling those in the nest she has chosen as her own receptacle. Mr. Alfred Newton states, in a note, that he saw Dr. Baldanus's collection of " clutches " in 1861—a collec- tion which seems to have resembled Mr. Hart's. He also states, however, that " no likeness whatever is ordinarily apparent in the very familiar case of the blue-green egg of the hedge- sparrow and that of the cuckoo, which is so often seen beside it"; and goes on to say that apparently the hedge-sparrow is, as a rule, more easily " duped" than other birds, such as the red-backed shrike, hunting, redstart, &c. Certainly the hedge-
sparrow is much more indifferent as to where she builds her nest!
I do not, personally, remember the hedge-sparrow's eggs in Mr. Hart's collection—where the cuckoo's egg was the " bright blue " spoken of by Archdeacon Wilberforce—but in a collec- tion of some forty " clutches " I might easily forget one in particular. Certainly the whole collection ie very impressive.—
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