132 CUCULUS CANORUS. 



fed on flesh, continued alive until the end of the following 

 spring, when it had assumed the colours of the old bird, only 

 that the fore-neck and breast were tinged with red, and the 

 back with brown. Mr Richardson, engraver, in Preston 

 Street, Edinburgh, obtained in the summer of 1838, a young 

 Cuckoo unable to fly, ^vhich he fed chiefly with meat. It 

 lived through the winter, having been kept near the fire, and 

 is now, on the 20tli of October 1889, in good health. It moult- 

 ed in spring for the first time, and then assumed the plumage 

 of the adult. It is very seldom however that one can be rear- 

 ed in captivity and brought through the winter. Another in- 

 dividual which I have seen had not moulted in November 

 when it died, and one kept by Montagu from July till the 

 14th of December, underwent no change of plumage. I am 

 therefore not inclined to credit the assertion of M. Temminck 

 and others, that when the young depart in autumn, " they 

 have all the upper parts of a uniform very dark olivaceous grey ; 

 some faint reddish bands on the nape ; broader bars of the 

 same colour on the secondary quills ; the throat and breast 

 transversely barred with reddish-grey and black ; but all the 

 rest of the plumage precisely as in adult individuals." 



In speaking of the Song Thrush, I adduced, as related by 

 Mr Weir, an instance of its feeding a young Cuckoo. An- 

 other of the same nature is related by the Bishop of Norwich, 

 in his Familiar History of Birds. The case was this : — A 

 young Cuckoo was taken from the nest of a Hedge-Sparrow, 

 and a few days afterwards, a young Thrush, scarcely fledged, 

 was put into the same cage. The latter could feed itself, but 

 the Cuckoo, its companion, was obliged to be fed with a quill ; 

 in a short time, however, the Thrush took upon itself the task 

 of feedmg its fellow prisoner, and continued so to do with the 

 utmost care, bestowing every possible attention, and manifest- 

 ing the greatest anxiety to satisfy its continual cravings for 

 food. " The following," he continues, " is a still more extraor- 

 dinary instance, corroborating the above, and for the truth of 

 which we can vouch in every particular. A young Thrush, 

 just able to feed itself, had been placed in a cage ; a short time 

 afterwards a young Cuckoo, which could not feed itself, was 



