g their over-grown _proteges_: this was
rather surprising, as there were so many Cuckoos about, and many must
have been hatched and out of the nest long before we left at the end of
July. I should think, however, Tree and Meadow Pipits, Skylarks and
Stonechats, from their numbers and the numbers of their nests, must be
the foster-parents most usually selected; other favourites, such as
Wagtails, Hedgesparrows, and Robins, being comparatively scarce in that
part of the Island, and Wheaters, which were numerous, had their nests
too far under large stones to give the Cuckoo an opportunity of
depositing her eggs there. I should have been very glad if I could have
made a good collection of Cuckoos' eggs in the Channel Islands, and,
knowing how common the bird was, I fully expected to do so, but I was
disappointed, and consequently unable to throw any light on the subject
of the variation in the colour of Cuckoos' eggs, as far as the Channel
Islands are concerned, or how far the foster-parents had been selected
with a view to their eggs being similar in colour to those of the
Cuckoo about to be palmed off upon them. The only Cuckoos' eggs I saw
were a few in the Museum, and in one or two other small collections: all
these were very much the same, and what appears to me the usual type of
Cuckoo's egg, a dull greyish ground much spotted with brown, and a few
small black marks much like many eggs of the Tree or Meadow Pipit. It is
hardly the place here to discuss the question how far Cuckoos select the
nest of the birds whose eggs are similar to their own, to deposit their
eggs in, or whether a Cuckoo hatched and reared by one foster-parent
would be likely to select the nest of the same species to deposit its
own eggs in; the whole matter has been very fully discussed in several
publications, both English and German; and Mr. Dresser has given a very
full _resume_ of the various arguments in his 'Birds of Europe'; and
whilst fully admitting the great variation in the colour of the Cuckoos'
eggs, he does not seem to think that any particular care is taken by the
parent Cuckoo to select foster-parents whose eggs are similar in colour
to its own; and the instances cited seem to bear out this opinion, with
which, as far as my small experience goes, I quite agree.

Whilst on the subject of Cuckoos I may mention, for the information of
such of my Guernsey readers who are not ornithologists, and therefore
not well acquainted with the fac