Nesting Habits of Cuckoo. 39 
were sent, have been recorded. It would no doubt have been 
more satisfactory, in some respects, if we could have had here 
this evening the persons who actually found these nests, but 
these persons had nothing to gain by deceiving Mr. Crowley, 
and there seems no reason at all to doubt that the nests were 
found, with the eggs of the Cuckoo in them, as they were stated 
to have been. 
As regards the breeding habits of the Common Cuckoo, the 
bird is entirely parasite. It never, under any circumstances, 
builds a nest for itself, but deposits its egg in the nest of some 
other bird, generally. of a Wagtail, Hedge Sparrow, or Pipit, 
and leaves that bird to hatch the egg and bring up the young 
cuckoo. The propensity of this little monster to eject from the 
nest all the eggs and the other young birds which the nest may 
contain, and thus to secure for itself the undivided attention of 
its foster parents is well known. 
The nests which the cuckoo has been known to select for the 
deposit of its eggs are of a very varied character. Mr. H. E. 
Dresser, in Nos. 69 and 70 of his well known work ‘A History 
ot the birds of Europe”’ (which number was issued as recently as 
August, 1878) has an exhaustive article on the Cuckoo, and in 
it he gives a list of all the species of birds to which the female 
cuckoo has been known to entrust her eggs. These are 92 
in number, and all of them, except four, belong to the order 
Passeres, or perching birds. The four exceptions are a species 
of Turtle Dove, the common Wood Pigeon, the Stock Dove, 
and last, not the least remarkable, the Little Grebe. Mr. 
Dresser’s list also comprises, amongst others, the Magpie and 
the Jay. 
Mr. Crowley’s collection of nests all belong to birds of the 
Passerine order, but some of them are of great interest. His 
two nests of the Dartford Warbler are the only nests of this 
rare species, in which the Cuckoo’s egg has been found. With 
the exception of Middlesex, the Dartford warbler does not 
breed, except as a rare straggler, in any county north of the 
Thames. Its great stronghold is that large series of commons 
' which lie in the extreme west of Surrey, and the extreme east 
of Hampshire, and it is just from that district that Mr. Crowley 
has received nearly all the nests which he has exhibited this 
evening. He has received from there, from time to time, no 
less than 84 nests of the Dartford Warbler; the two which 
contain the Cuckoos’ eggs was sent to him by a man named 
Smithers, who lived at Churt; one was sent in the summer of 
1860, and the other in the summer of 1869. The three Green- 
finches’ nests again, are the only instances on record of the 
Cuckoo having used the nest of this species in the British Isles. 
These were also found and sent by Smithers, one in 1862, 
