118 On certain Peculiarities in the 
though a single glance at the small weak legs and feet, and the 
straight powerless slender beak, would at once undeceive on a 
nearer examination: that, with the exception of the Honey-buz- 
zard (Buteo apivorus) it is the largest of British insectivorous 
birds ;' for its food consists of insects of many sorts, but more par- 
ticularly of the several species of hairy caterpillars which abound 
in the early summer, and which long-haired caterpillars are rejected 
by almost all birds, with the exception of the Cuckoo: so that it 
has been thought by some, that the reason why that bird leaves 
this country so early, is the failure by the middle of July of its 
favourite food.? I may observe, too, that it is the male bird 
alone which gives utterance to the peculiar note which we hail so 
gladly as an announcement of spring, though among other popular 
errors, the following old couplet attributes the song to the female, 
‘¢ The Cuckoo is a pretty bird, and sings as she flies, 
She brings us good tidings, and tells us no lies.” 
possibly however, this may be only the indiscriminate use of the 
masculine and feminine pronoun so common in Wiltshire: I am 
bound too, in honesty to add, that the well-known cry of the 
Cuckoo has been declared by some naturalists, (though I think 
erroneously) to be common to both sexes.* Lastly, I will repeat 
that the female has that strange peculiarity of depositing her 
eggs singly in the nests of other species, which she selects as suit- 
able foster parents to her own young: a peculiarity not shared in 
by any others of our British birds, though by no means unknown 
among the feathered tribes of other countries, the Cowbird for 
example of America,°® which belongs to the Starling tribe, several 
species of the African Cuckoos and others. It is from this last 
eccentricity of conduct, that so many strange and unlooked for 
habits of the Cuckoo take their rise: let us examine them one by 
one; but first let me earnestly protest against the unmeaning out- 
1 Jesse’s Gleanings of Natural History, p. 125, 
2 Wood’s Illustrated Natural History, vol. ii., p. 574. 
3 Naturalist for 1852, p. 84. 
4 Magazine Nat. Hist. vol. viii., p. 329—382. Naturalist for 1851, pp. 11, 172. 
5 Wilson’s American Ornithology, vol. ii., p. 162. 
