90 
T now find that the opinion ventured in my account of this species 
as to the impossibility of the young Cuckoo ejecting the young of its 
foster-parents at the early age of three or four days is erroneous ; 
for a lady of undoubted veracity and considerable ability as an ob- 
server of nature and as an artist, has actually seen the act performed, 
and has illustrated her statement of the fact by a sketch taken at 
the time, a tracing of which has been kindly sent to me by the 
Duke of Argyll, and I have considered it of sufficient interest 
to reproduce here in a woodcut. The sketch was accompanied by 
Mrs. Blackburn’s account of the circumstance as it came under her 
observation—which is here given from No. 124 of ‘ Nature, a 
weekly illustrated journal of science. 
“« Several well-known naturalists who have seen my sketch from 
life of the young Cuckoo ejecting the young Pipit (opposite p. 22 of 
the little versified tale of mine)* have expressed a wish that the 
details of my observations of the scene should be published. I 
therefore send you the facts, though the sketch itself seems to me to 
be the only important addition I have made to the admirably accu- 
rate description given by Dr. Jenner in his letter to John Hunter, 
which is printed in the ‘ Philosophical Transactions ’ for 1788 (vol. 
Ixxviil. pp. 225, 226), and which I have read with pleasure since 
putting down my own notes. 
«The nest (which we watched last June, after finding the Cuckoo’s 
egg in it) was that of the common Meadow-Pipit (Titlark, Moss- 
cheeper), and had two Pipit’s eggs besides that of the Cuckoo. It 
was below a heather bush, on the declivity of a low abrupt bank on 
a Highland hill-side in Moidart. 
« At one visit the Pipits were found to be hatched, but not the 
Cuckoo. At the next visit, which was after an interval of forty- 
eight hours, we found the young Cuckoo alone in the nest, and both 
the young Pipits lying down the bank, about ten inches from the 
margin of the nest, but quite lively after being warmed in the hand. 
They were replaced in the nest beside of the Cuckoo, which 
struggled about till it got its back under one of them, when it 
climbed backwards directly up the open side of the nest, and hitched 
the Pipit from its back on to the edge. It then stood quite upright 
on its legs, which were straddled wide apart, with the claws firmly 
fixed halfway down the inside of the nest, among the interlacing 
fibres of which the nest was woven; and, stretching its wings apart 
and backwards, it elbowed the Pipit fairly over the margin so far 
that its struggles took it down the bank instead of back into the 
nest. 
« After this the Cuckoo stood a minute or two, feeling back with 
its wings, as if to make sure that the Pipit was fairly overboard, and 
then subsided into the bottom of the nest. 
« As it was getting late, and the Cuckoo did not immediately set 
to work on the other nestling, I replaced the ejected one, and went 
* «The Pipits,’ illustrated by Mrs. Hugh Blackburn. Glasgow: Maclehose, 
1872. 
