The white spots are composed of a soft calcareous substance, apparently deposited on the surface of the shell after its complete formation: they are raised, and look like snow-flakes, and when the egg is fresh laid may be easily washed off with cold water, and are so extremely delicate that their purity is lost on the egg being taken into the hand. The young birds hatched from these lovely eggs are proverbial for their ugliness, _Pichon de Urraca_ being a term of contempt commonly applied to a person remarkable for want of comeliness. They are as unclean as they are ugly, so that the nest, usually containing six or seven young, is pleasant neither to sight nor smell. There is something ludicrous in the notes of these young birds, resembling, as they do, the shrill half-hysterical laughter of a female exhausted by over-indulgence in mirth. One summer there was a large brood in a tree close to my home, and every time we heard the parent bird hastening to her nest with food in her beak, and uttering her plaintive cries, we used to run to the door to hear them. As soon as the old bird reached the nest they would burst forth into such wild extravagant peals and continue them so long, that we could not but think it a rare amusement to listen to them. According to Azara the Guira Cuckoo in Paraguay has very friendly relations with the Ani (_Crotophaga ani_), the birds consorting together in one flock, and even laying their eggs in one nest; and he affirms that he has seen nests containing eggs of both species. These nests were probably brought to him by his Indian collectors, who were in the habit of deceiving him, and it is more than probable that in this matter they were practising on his credulity; though it is certain that birds of different species do sometimes lay in one nest, as I have found--the Common Teal and the Tinamou for instance. I also doubt very much that the bird is ever polygamous, as Azara suspected; but it frequently wastes eggs, and its procreant habits are sometimes very irregular and confusing, as the following case will show:--