298 Mr. Blackwall on the 



in the octavo edition of Zoonomia,* in an extract from a letter written 

 by the Rev. Mr. Wilmot of Morley, near Derby ; and as it is deserving of 

 attention, I shall transcribe the entire passage. " In the beginning of 

 " July, 1792," Mr. Wilmot writes, " I was attending some labourers 

 " on my farm, when one of them said to me, ' there is a bird's nest 

 ** upon one of the coal-slack hills ; the bird is now sitting, and is ex- 

 " actly like a Cuckoo. They say that Cuckoos never hatch their own 

 " eggs, otherwise I should have sworn it was one.' He took me to the 

 " spot ; it was in an open fallow ground ; the bird was upon the nest ; 

 " I stood and observed her some time, and was perfectly satisfied it was 

 " a Cuckoo : I then put my hand towards her, and she almost let me 

 " touch her before she rose from the nest, which she appeared to quit 

 " with uneasiness, skimming over the ground in the manner that a hen 

 " Partridge does when disturbed from a new-hatched brood, and went 

 " only to a thicket about forty or fifty yards from the nest ; and conti- 

 " nued there as long as I stood to observe her, which was not many mi- 

 " nutes. In the nest, which was barely a hole scratched out of the coal 

 " slack in the manner of a Plover's nest, I observed three eggs, but did 

 " not touch them. As I had labourers constantly at work in that field, 

 " I went thither every day, and always looked to see if the bird was 

 " there, but did not disturb her for seven or eight days, when I Jvas 

 " tempted to drive her from the nest, and found two young ones, that 

 " appeared to have been hatched some days, but there was no appear- 

 *' ance of the third egg. I then mentioned this extraordinary circum- 

 " stance (for such I thought it) to Mr. and Mrs. Holyoak, of Bidford 

 " Grange, Warwickshire, and to Miss M. Willes, who were on a visit at 

 " my house, and who all went to see it. Very lately I reminded Mr. 

 *' Holyoak of it, who told me he had a perfect recollection of the whole, 

 " and that considering it a curiosity, he walked to look at it several times, 

 ^' was perfectly satisfied as to its being a Cuckoo, and thought her more 

 ** attentive to her young than any other bird he ever observed, having 

 " always found her brooding her young. In about a week after I first 

 ** saw the young ones, one of them was missing, and I rather suspected 

 « my plough-boys having taken it, though it might possibly have been 



* See the section on Instinct, p. 246, et seq. 



