Habits of the Jay, 189 



the extreme for many days, and cannot support its own 

 weight. A scientific friend in the United States of North 

 America has asked my opinion of our English account con- 

 cerning a young cuckoo, which, on the very day that it was 

 hatched, was actually seen retrograding up the side of a 

 hedge sparrow's nest with a young hedge sparrow on its 

 back. After reaching the top, it rested for a moment, and 

 then, with a jerk, threw off its load quite clear of the nest. 

 No bird in the creation could perform such an astounding 

 feat under such embarrassing circumstances. The young 

 cuckoo cannot, by any means, support its own weight during 

 the first day of its existence. Of course, then, it is utterly 

 incapable of clambering, rump foremost, up the steep side of 

 a hedge sparrow's nest with the additional weight of a young 

 hedge sparrow on its back. Add to this, that an old bird 

 the young of which are born blind always remains on the nest 

 during the whole of the day on which the chick is excluded 

 from the shell, in order to protect it. Now, the old hedge 

 sparrow, in the case just mentioned, must have been forced 

 from her nest by the accidental presence of an intruder. Her 

 absence, then, at this important crisis, was quite contrary to 

 her usual economy, for she ought to have been upon the 

 nest. It follows, then, that instinct could not have directed 

 the newly hatched and blind cuckoo to oust the hedge spar- 

 row, even though it had strength to do so, because the old 

 bird would have been sitting close on the nest, but for the 

 circumstance which forced her from it, namely, the accidental 

 presence of an intruder. The account carries its own con- 

 demnation, no matter by whom related or by whom received. 

 I had much rather believe the story of baby Hercules 

 throttling two snakes in his cradle. 



" Parvus erat, manibusque suis Tirynthius angues 

 Pressit, et in cunis jam Jove dignus erat." 



When naturalists affixed the epithet glandarius to the 

 name of the jay, they ought also to have accorded it to the 

 jackdaw, the rook, the carrion crow, and the magpie, not 

 forgetting the pheasant and the ringdove. All these birds 

 feed voraciously on the acorn ; and, with the exception of the 

 two last mentioned, they bury it in the ground, not in hoarded 

 heaps, but separately, here and there, as fancy may direct 

 them. 



When the snows of winter have fairly set in, and thus pre- 

 vented the jay from finding a supply of acorns amongst the 

 fallen leaves in the woods, it is then seen flitting from hedge 

 to hedge in the vicinity of pea and bean stacks, where it may 



p 3 



