THE CUCKOO. 107 



Many times liave I had the curiosity to open the stomachs 

 of woodcocks and snipes ; but nothing ever occurred that 

 helped to explain to me what their subsistence might be; all 

 that I could ever find was a soft mucus, among which lay 

 many pellucid small gravels. 



LETTEE XXX, 



TO THE SAME. 



Selborne, Feb. 19, 1770. 

 Deae Sir, — Tour observation, that "the cuckoo does not 

 deposit its egg indiscriminately in the nest of the first bird 

 that comes in its way, but probably looks out a nurse in 

 some degree congenerous, with whom to entrust its young,"* 

 is perfectly 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 were 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 red-breast, all soft-billed insectivorous birds , 

 The excellent Mr. "Willughby mentions the nest of the 

 palumbus, (ring-dove,) and oi 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 knowledge ; but 

 says afterwards, that he saw himself a wagtail feeding a 

 cuckoo. It appears hardly possible that a soft-billed bird 



* Providence, or rather the great Creator, who does everything for the best, 

 has 80 ordained it that the cuckoo only deposits its eggs in those nests in 

 which the young will be fed with the food most congenial with their nature, 

 in fact in those of birds strictly insectivorous. It is a curious fact, and one I 

 believe not hitherto noticed by naturalists, that the cuckoo deposits its egg in 

 the nest of the titlark, robin, wagtail, &c., by means of its foot. If the bird 

 eat on the nest while the egg was laid, the weight of its body would crush the 

 nest, and cause it to be forsaken, and thus one of the ends of Providence 

 would be defeated. I have found the eggs of a cuckoo in the nest of a 

 white-throat, built in so small a hole in a garden wall that it was absolutely 

 impossible for the cuckoo to hE.7e got into it. — Ed. 



