Mr. J . BlackwalVs Ornithological Notes. 373 



a stone or mass of rock in the vicinity of the stream, and after 

 violently striking the prize against it several times in rapid suc- 

 cession, swallowed it entire. 



The agreeable song of this species may frequently be heard 

 early in the year, even during severe frost. 



The Rook, Corvus frugilegus. 



The rook introduced to notice in the ' Annals and Magazine 

 of Natural History,' vol. xv. pp. 169, 170, as the subject of an 

 experiment made for the purpose of ascertaining whether the 

 nudity at the base of the bill and the anterior part of the head 

 in this species is referable to a mechanical or to a physiological 

 cause, was accidentally killed on the 20th of June 1846. It lived 

 long enough, however, thoroughly to establish the fact, that after 

 the feathers are once shed from those parts in the act of moulting 

 they are not renewed, as the denudation became rather more ex- 

 tensive and complete after the bird had moulted a second time in 

 the summer of 1845, and continued unchanged to the day of its 

 death, affording a convincing proof that this conspicuous feature 

 in the adult rook, which strikingly affects its physiognomical 

 expression, must be regarded as a specific character. 



The Cuckoo, Cuculus canorus. 



Several intelligent ornithologists have denied or doubted the 

 capability of young cuckoos to eject the progeny of their foster- 

 parents from the nest until they are a w^ek or ten days old, and 

 have acquired the use of their eyes. This incredulity can only 

 be accounted for on the supposition that sucli observers have 

 failed carefully to investigate the early oeconomy of this species, 

 which I shall proceed to show not only serves to establish the 

 fact called in question, but likewise renders evident the unrea- 

 sonableness of hastily rejecting phsenomena which are extraordi- 

 nary or anomalous as unworthy of belief, and of relying too 

 exclusively on analogical reasoning in natural history. 



On the 30th of June 1823 1 took the nest of a meadow pipit, 

 Anthus pratensis, containing a young cuckoo, which was disen- 

 gaged from the ^^^ on the 28th of the same month, and sup- 

 porting it firmly near the side of my bed on the evening of the 

 day on which it was procured, very early in the morning of the 

 ]st of July, when all was still, I carefully introduced into it eggs 

 of different kinds in the first instance, and afterwards young 

 birds previously selected for the purpose, and had the satisfaction 

 of contemplating at leisure the entire process of their ejection, so 

 minutely and accurately described by Dr. Jenner*. These asto- 



* See the Memoirs of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Man- 

 chester, Second Series, vol. iv. p. 4G2. 



