Life- History of the Cuckoo. 119 
ery, and charge of unnatural unfeeling conduct often preferred 
against the Cuckoo,! as if she did not follow out the instincts of 
her nature as truly as every other bird; and as if there was not 
some good and sufficient reason, (though we may be unable to 
fathom it) why some species delegate the care of their young to 
other birds: rather, I think, should we admire the wonderful 
instinct which leads them to select, as foster parents, those species 
only whose feeding is similar to their own, and so would provide 
their young with suitable nourishment; and that dexterity which 
enables them to insert their eggs amongst others, just at the right 
moment when the foster parent is preparing to sit.” 
Now, first I beg to state without hesitation that never, by any 
possibility does our British Cuckoo, either build a nest of her own, 
or incubate her eggs on the ground. We hear constant tales of 
such occurrences: every year our periodicals and newspapers con- 
fain statements of such marvellous incidents, which would be 
_ marvellous indeed if true: but I venture to assert most positively, 
without fear of contradiction, that all such stories have originated 
from some error: and either the common Night-jar,? of nearly the 
same size, fluttering away from her marbled eggs at the root of 
an old oak, or some other bird has been mistaken for the Cuckoo, 
which never, in any single instance, has been known to sit on her 
own eggs. 
The Cuckoo then, houseless and oer though she is, and the 
veritable “ gipsy of the feathered tribes,” as she has been styled, soon 
after her arrival here in the spring, begins to busy herself no less 
than other birds, in making preparations for her future progeny : 
but instead of preparing a nest as other birds do, her occupation is 
to scour the hedgerows and plantations, and watch the busy nest- 
makers with more eager eye than any schoolboy ;* observing day 
by day the progress made, and anxiously selecting those which 
1 Bishop Stanley’s Familiar History of Birds, vol. ii., p. 80. 
2 Gilbert White’s Natural History of Selborne, letter iv. 
2Montagu’s Supplement to Ornithological Dictionary, vol. ii. Rennie’s 
Architecture of Birds, p. 380. G. White’s Selborne, letter vii. 
*Rennie’s Architecture of Birds, p. 374. 
