GREY CUCKOO. 121 



with ease over the grass or other herbage. As to our bird, it 

 no doubt can cling to the branches with firmness, but it is no 

 more a climber in any sense than the Jay or the Blackbird, 

 which, although they often resort to woods, also frequent the 

 open grounds. In fact, the order Scansores of authors is a most 

 heterogenous association. Greater differences than there are 

 between the feet of a Cuckoo and those of a Linnet^ occur in 

 even the most possibly natural family, namely in the Cheli- 

 dones ; and if a certain arrangement of the toes, without re- 

 gard to their strength and the form of the claws, were so im- 

 portant as some ornithologists would have us to believe, the 

 Swifts and Swallows ought to stand in different orders ; the 

 common Gull and the Kittiwake in different genera. 



The most remarkable trait in the character of the Cuckoo 

 is its confiding the charge of hatching its eggs, and rearing its 

 young, to some other bird, always much smaller than itself. 

 The species on which it thus imposes its progeny is gene- 

 rally the Meadow Pipit, Anthus pratensis. In Scotland I 

 have never heard of its laying in the nest of any other bird, 

 but in England its egg has been found in those of various 

 species : — the Hedge Chanter, White Wagtail, Sky Lark, 

 Nightingale, Garden Warbler, and others. The egg is small 

 in proportion to the size of the bird, being generally not much 

 larger than that of its foster parent, its average length from ten 

 to eleven twelfths of an inch, its greatest diameter from eight 

 to nine twelfths, its colour white, greyish-white, or reddish- 

 white, speckled with ash-grey or greyish-brown. Various con- 

 jectures have been hazarded as to the cause of the dispropor- 

 tionately small size of the eggs. If we say that as the Cuckoo 

 is physically constrained to deposit its egg in the nest of some 

 small bird of the insectivorous kind, its egg must be nearly of 

 the size of those of its dupe, we may state a truth, but we aflbrd 

 no explanation of the phenomenon. Why should it be so con- 

 strained I why does it not form a nest, hatch its eggs, and rear 

 its young ? Because, as some say, it leaves its summer resi- 

 dence early in July, and as it remains only two months there, 

 it could not leave its young in a sufficiently advanced state to 

 shift for themselves. But why should it hurry away so fast I 



