78 INSECT TRANSFORMATIONS. 



ver.' Be this as it may, the cuckoo, which bears a 

 strong resemblance to a hawk when on the wing, is 

 certain to be accompanied by a similar retinue of small 

 birds wherever it flies. In the north this is so com- 

 monly observed, that the cuckoo is popularly believed 

 to be always attended by a iitling or pippet {Jlnihns 

 pratcnsis, Bechstein), which, it is further imagined, 

 has been its stepmother and nurse from the egg : this, 

 indeed, is the bird whose nest the cuckoo most fre- 

 quently selects to deposit the eggs which she so 

 strangely and unnaturally abandons; though it is more 

 probable that it is not on this account, but because she 

 appears to be a hawk, that the pippet and other small 

 birds persecute her. 



Linnaeus records in his ' Lachesis Lapponica,' that 

 at Tornea there is a meadow, or bog, full of water- 

 hemlock ( Cicuta virosa), which annually destroys from 

 fifty to a hundred head of cattle. It seems that they 

 eat most of it in spring, when first turned into the pas- 

 ture, partly from their eagerness for fresh pasture, and 

 partly from their long fasting and greediness, the herb- 

 age being then short. Besides, from the immersion 

 of the hemlock under water, it may not have the pro- 

 per scent to deter them. A similar destruction of cat- 

 tle from the same cause occurs in the wide meadows 

 of Leinings.* 



* J. R., in Mag. of Nat. Hist., i, 374. 



