336 conviim
specimen of the nest or egg, if taken, seems to have been preserved
or described from either locality. As regards Sweden
Dr. Baldamus is said to have received in 1850, from Scania,
what subsequently appeared to be a true egg of this bird;
but the first identified nest, with small young and fragments
of egg-shells, was sent in 1868 from Hesselskog in Dalsland
to Herr Stenstrom, who in succeeding years got three more
nests with perfect eggs, while in 1872 Herr Meves received
a nest with eggs from Wermland. In 1862 and the following
years the Danish island of Bornholm furnished HH.
Erichsen, Fischer and Theobald with the reward they had
been so long seeking and so well deserved.* In Germany
an empty nest, found by Thienemann in the Riesengebirge
many years ago and exhibited in the Museum at Dresden,
is believed, as before stated, to be the first authentic example
ever seen by a naturalist. According to Hintz (J. f. 0.
1861, p. 469) a nest was found in the Bhtower district
of Pomerania in 1860, and in 1862 Herr Schutt obtained
three nests near Waldkirchen in Baden,* while in 1868 a
nest was found in the Nedlitzer district of Anhalt, an egg
from which came into Dr. Baldamus’s possession. In
Austria, according to Herr Grill (Yerh. k.k. z.-b. Ver. 1858,
p. 427), a nest with young was found in 1858 in the
Langbaththale on the northern slopes of the Hollgebirge.
The reports of nests obtained in Hungary by Petdnyi have
been deemed unsatisfactory, but an egg obtained by Herr
Bielz from the South Carpathian mountains and sent in
1847 to Dr. Baldamus, from whom it passed into the Editor’s
keeping, seems to have been correctly assigned to this
species. In Styria the eggs from two nests, found in 1867
on the Hochanger Alp near Brack, were sent by Dr. Fiister
to Seidensacher, after whose death others were transmitted
from the same locality to various collectors, and in 1871
the Ritter Y. von Tschusi-Schmidhoffen himself, and Dr.
Hanf, took »each a nest on the Sirbitzkogel, at the height
of 4500 to 5000 feet above the sea, while two other nests
were taken the same season by Dr. Fiister near Brack. In
* See foot-note on page 334.
NUTCRACKER. 337
Tyrol Herr Franz obtained no less than five nests at
Schlanders in 1864, At Tiefenkasten in the Grisons in
1867, Dr. Baldamus himself found two nests with fledged
young and a single egg, and six more nests were taken
between ,1868 and 1872 in the Jura of Soleure-^-five of
them by Herr G. Yogel of Zurich. To France however
belongs the merit of the earliest discovery of the eggs of
the Nutcracker, for it was near Sanieres in the department
of the Lower Alps that Caire, as before said, obtained
its eggs in 1846, and from him specimens reached Dr.
Baldamus in 1848, while others came later, through his
means, to Baedeker and several German oologists, as well
as one, taken in 1858, to the Editor. There is no
doubt that many other localities in Europe, from Russia
to Sardinia (where Lord Lilford received positive assurance
of its breeding) and possibly SpaintYsince it has been
obtained in Estremadura—serve the Nutcracker as nesting-
stations, but the evidence-above adduced may here suffice,
and any that is less positive be omitted for the present.
The young are fed partly on insects, which in summer and
autumn form with snails the chief diet of the adults also,
but, as winter comes on, the berries, nuts and seeds of forest-
trees become their staple sustenance, and whenever these
become scarce in the native haunts of the birds, they wander
far and wide in search of food, so that they occur irregularly
in most parts of the continent, though no examples have
yet been observed in Greece, Turkey or the Crimea. The
Nutcracker doubtless breeds in the forest-districts of Siberia,
for the young have been seen in the far east of that country.
It also occurs in Kamchatka, Northern China and Japan.
The flight of this bird is commonly said to be laboured
and only unwillingly prolonged in the open, yet Dr. Radde
states that he has seen small flocks rising and circling
aloft till they were almost out of sight, and then dropping
suddenly, one bird after another, to a tree-top, whence they
would, after a short time, renew their practice—much it
would seem after the manner in which Rooks perform their
strange aerial sports before described. Among trees the