48 ANNITEESAEY ADDRESS. > 



food, in fact. Hence, no doubt, the mythical "pigeon's milk " for 

 "which soft schoolboys are sent on the 1st of April. 



Even the best and most conscientious observers occasionally fall 

 into error, especially when they start with preconceived notions. 

 The mistakes of Pliny, the father of Natural History, of whom you 

 have probably heard more than you have read, are extremely 

 amusing, and if time allowed I might give more instances, but here 

 is one. Talking of the cuckoo, he says: "The cuckoo is another 

 form of hawke. At a certain season it changes its shape and 

 plumage. It is the only hawke that hath not hooked talons. 

 Neither is it like a hawke in its head, nor, indeed, in any other 

 respect, while in the beake it resembles the pigeon. In addition 

 it is devoured by other hawkes. It changes its voice alsoe.'' 

 (Holland's translation.) It is certainly strange that, observing all 

 these points of diiference, it never occurred to Pliny that the bird 

 was not a hawk at all. He adds further that it " lays its egg in 

 the nest of the pigeon," which I need not say it never does, nor 

 ever did; and that it is "hated of other birds because it finishes 

 by devouring its foster-mother." Ton will remember that Shake- 

 speare refers to this myth — 



" The hedo^e- sparrow fed the cuckoo so long, 

 She had her head bitten off by her young." 



The strangest peculiarity of the bird, however, as narrated by 

 Pliny, is that it, in common with the crow, "lays its egg from its 

 mouth.'''' This assertion arose from no spirit of untruth, but simply 

 from hasty observation. The cuckoo, as you know, deposits her 

 egg — a disproportionately small one — in the nest of some insecti- 

 vorous bird, the wagtail, hedge-sparrow, or such like. As it 

 would, in many cases, be impossible for the bird to sit on the nest 

 for the purpose, she lays her egg on the ground, and then, taking 

 it in her capacious mouth, deposits it in the chosen nest. The 

 habit of the crow, a professed egg-stealer, is to strike its lower 

 mandible into the egg, and so carry it away. No doubt Pliny 

 observed the cuckoo in the act of placing the egg in the nest, and 

 the crow carrying the egg protruding from its bill, and jumped at 

 the extraordinary conclusion referred to. 



