CUCKOO PUZZLES 45 



naturalists have confirmed, that the blind and 

 naked young cuckoo manages to get its body under- 

 neath an egg or a nestling, and by moving con- 

 vulsively backwards, ousts it from the nest. It is a 

 prodigious effort for a puny infant, and is followed 

 by great exhaustion. After a rest, however, the 

 eviction may be repeated if necessary. A short 

 time ago the French ornithologist Raspail, in a 

 paper read before the Zoological Society of France, 

 gave expression once again to the skepticism which 

 "Jenner's legend" has often aroused. Pouncing 

 upon some faked photographs of the alleged evic- 

 tion, Raspail upbraided naturalists with their 

 credulity, and maintained that for six days after 

 hatching it is a physical impossibility for the young 

 cuckoo to push anything whatever outside the nest. 

 What happens, according to Raspail, is that the 

 mother cuckoo keeps an eye on the child which she 

 has put out to nurse, and makes room for it in the 

 nest by picking out the eggs or the young birds. It 

 is admitted that a cuckoo in depositing its egg in 

 a nest may occasionally puncture, or swallow, or 

 remove one or more of the others; but, circum- 

 stantial as Raspail's picture is, we adhere to what 

 Newton said twenty years ago : "Of the assertion 

 that the cuckoo herself takes any interest in the 

 future welfare of the egg she has foisted on her 

 victim, or of its product, there is no evidence worth 

 a moment's attention." It may sometimes happen 

 that the foster-parents remove a broken egg or a 

 nestling which the young cuckoo has mechanically 



