62 The British Naturalist, 



liance on the dicta of high authorities. The idle habit of 

 too readily assenting to the assertions of others, without in- 

 vestigation of the subjects themselves, checks at once the 

 spirit of research and enquiry, and serves oftentimes to con- 

 firm and propagate a belief in the grossest errors. Men of 

 eminence as naturalists have maintained, as it were, " ex 

 cathedra," that swallows retire under water at the approach 

 of winter, and remain in that element till the ensuing spring *, 

 that hawks keep truce with lesser birds and poultry during 

 the season of the cuckoo's singing f, in order that these may 

 enjoy leisure while building their nests, hatching, and rearing 

 their broods ; and there are still to be found those, in whose 

 minds these and similar opinions obtain credence. We have 

 very lately been gravely told that cuckoos remain dormant 

 in this country, and are to be met with during the winter 

 rolled up in moss and leaves in the holes of banks, &c. Our 

 author, however, is one (and we hope his example may be- 

 come more general among the fraternity of naturalists) who, 

 instead of taking things entirely upon trust, chooses to think 

 and believe for himself: — 



"Nullius addictus jurare in verba magistri," 



he prefers looking at nature, and listening to her, with his 

 own eyes and ears, and forming his opinions accordingly, 

 rather than putting up with the reports of others, and be- 

 lieving just what he is told to believe. We find him, accord-* 

 ingly, a little sceptical as to some points in the natural history 

 of the cuckoo, which, though anomalous and extraordinary in 

 the highest degree, are yet universally credited. 



" We have no wish," he observes, " to offer any decided opinion on the 

 singular propensity alleged of the cuckoo, that the female generally deposits 

 her eggs, one by one, in the nests of small birds, where they are hatched 

 by their foster-mothers, and fed by them till they thus are fledged; in the 

 course of which time, they most ungratefully eject their foster-brothers 

 and sisters from the nest. In the face of the many grave and learned 

 authorities by which this is stated, it would not become us to give an 

 opinion ; all that we can positively say is, that, although we have seen 

 very many young cuckoos in nests, sometimes two, but never more in any 

 one nest, and generally only one ; and although we have seen them in 

 nests disproportionally small, and of the same structure as the nests of 

 smaller birds, we have never met with the egg of the cuckoo along with 

 that of any other bird, have never scared a little bird from the act of in- 



* " Hirundo rustica unaque cum urbica autumno demergitur, vereque 

 emergit.*' ( Linnesi St/stema Natures.) 



f " Paciscuntur inducias cum avibus, imprimis domesticis, quamdiu 

 cuculus cuculat, ut hae feriantur sub nidificatione, incubatione, pul- 

 litie." (Id.) 



