1902. 223 



REVIEWS. 



CONCERNING CUCKOOS. 



The Early Life of the Young Cuckoo, by W. Percival Westef.!., 

 M.B.O.U., author of "A Year with Nature," etc. Illustrated with 

 four remarkable photographs taken direct from Nature by J. Peat 

 Millar. London : Thomas Burleigh, 376 Strand, 1902. Pp. 26. 

 Price IS. net. 



A very important service was rendered to ornithology in the summer 

 of 1899 by Mr. John Craig, an Ayrshire naturalist, who set at rest con- 

 clusively the long-vexed question as to the young Cuckoo's method of 

 ridding itself of its foster-brethren by a series of excellent photographs, 

 exhibiting the bird in the act of ejecting a young Yellow-hammer. The 

 photographs were, we believe, exhibited at the meeting of the British 

 Ornithologists' Union in 1900. Mr. W. Percival Westell has entitled 

 himsfelf to the thanks of naturalists by reproducing four of them in the 

 little book before us, together with a brief resume of Mr. Craig's observa- 

 tions and experiments while he had the young Cuckoo under his eye. 

 It may be noted that the photographs confirm the almost complete 

 accuracy of the account given by Jenner and other observers, on whose 

 veracity some doubts had from time to time been cast. They also 

 corroborate the statement that when about ten days old the murderous 

 instinct of the young Cuckoo disappears, and it will then live on 

 amicable terms with another young bird placed in the nest. Mr. 

 Westell has rather spoilt his pamphlet by digressions on the origin of 

 the Cuckoo's peculiar habit, on which he has no suggestions of any 

 value to offer. He quotes as " the most practical explanation he has yet 

 seen" of the parasitic instinct, the theory that "if the bird did build 

 a nest for itself, and laid four or five eggs to the clutch, one on each 

 succeeding day, the instinctive desire implanted in the young Cuckoo of 

 clearing everything out of the nest in which it is hatched is so strong 

 that there would be a struggle among them for possession of the nest, the 

 weakest would perish, and they would be in a worse position than at 

 present for perpetuating their species." It ought, we think, to have 

 been sufl&ciently obvious to Mr. Westell that this so-called explanation 

 explains nothing. It involves the wholly gratuitous and improbable 

 assumption that the young Cuckoo had developed its fratricidal instinct 

 before the parasitic instinct originated in the old Cuckoo. There is 

 nothing original about the suggestion that these two instincts are 

 Supplemental to each other; but if either of them preceded the other it 

 appears to us much tne more probable view that the order followed was 

 the opposite to that which Mr. Westell's hypothesis requires. In con- 

 clusion we may point out that the name of the Crested Tit (p. 17), in a 

 list of Western Palsearctic species in whose nests the Cuckoo's egg has 

 been found, is evidently a misprint for that of the Crested Lark. 



C. B. M. 



