122 On certain Peculiarities in the 
(as Dr. Jenner supposed,! and so led many into error) which 
generally removes from the nest the young Cuckoo’s foster brethren, 
and any unhatched eggs there may be, a fact which my friend, the 
late lamented naturalist, Mr. Waterton, proved? to be quite im- 
possible for any newly hatched bird, however precocious that bird 
might be. | 
Whether or no this is the last office which the parent Cuckoo 
undertakes for its young, I will not venture to affirm: though it 
is the opinion of some experienced naturalists that she really feels 
an anxiety for her young, not less than that shown by other birds :* 
while others maintain that she has occasionally, though very ex- 
ceptionally, been known to feed her own young, of which several 
most convincing proofs have been adduced :* and others again 
declare that she sometimes even takes the young under her pro- 
tection, when they are sufficiently fledged to leave the nest.? But 
be that as it’ may, towards the end of July the old birds are pre- 
paring to migrate, and the male has already changed his note to 
that stammering repetition of the first syllable which (as all observers 
know,) heralds the cessation of his so called song: and which an 
old writer, John Hayward, who flourished about A.D. 1580, has 
described in the following quaint but very graphic rhymes, 
‘‘In April the Cuckoo can sing her song by rote. 
In June oft’times she cannot sing a note. 
At first, koo; koo; koo; sings till can she do 
At last, kooke, kooke, kooke; six kookes to one koo.” 
By the beginning of August then, the parent Cuckoos are gone 
southwards, but the young Cuckoo is notoriously a tedious nurse- 
ling, and indeed having to grow from the inmate of a very small 
eggshell, to a bird of considerable dimensions, requires time for 
such development, and taxes to a very large extent, the powers as 
well as the assiduity of its foster parents: by degrees this over- 
grown infant not only fills the little nest which was never meant 

1 Philosophical Transactions, vol. 1xxviii. 
2 Essays in Natural History, first series. p. 228. 
3 Wood’s Illustrated Nat. Hist. vol. ii. p. 572. Naturalist for 1851, p. 67, 162. 
‘Naturalist for 1851. p. 11. 
5 Yarrell, vol. ii., p. 572. Naturalist for 1851, p. 233. 
