156 NATURAL HISTORY 
generous, with whom to intrust its young,” is per- 
fectly new to me, and struck me so forcibly that I 
naturally fell into a train of thought that led me to 
consider whether the fact was so, and what reason 
there was for it. When I came to recollect and 
inquire, I could not find that any cuckoo had ever 
been seen in these parts except in the nest of the 
wagtail, the hedge-sparrow, the titlark, the white- 
throat, and the redbreast, all soft-billed, insectivo- 
rous birds. The excellent Mr. Willoughby men- 
tions the nest of the palumbus (ring-dove) and of 
the fringilla (chaffinch), birds that subsist on 
acorns and grains, and such hard food; but then 
he does not mention them as of his own knowl- 
edge, but says afterward that he saw himself a 
wagtail feeding a cuckoo. It appears hardly pos. 
sible that a soft-billed bird should subsist on the 
same food with the hard-billed ; for the former have 
thin membranaceous stomachs suited to their soft 
food, while the latter, the granivorous tribe, have 
strong muscular gizzards, which, like mills, grind, 
by the help of small gravels and pebbles, what is 
swallowed. ‘This proceeding of the cuckoo, of 
dropping its eggs as it were by chance, is such a 
monstrous outrage on maternal affection, one of 
the first great dictates of nature, and such a vio. 
lence on instinct, that, had it only been related of 
a bird in the Brazils or Peru, it would never have 
merited our belief. But yet, should it farther ap- 
pear that this simple bird, when divested of that 
natural oropy7) that seems to raise the kind in gen- 
eral above themselves, and inspire them with ex- 
traordinary degrees of cunning and address, may 
be still endued with a more enlarged faculty of dis. 
