12 
Strange as it may seem in our daily reading of Marconigrams, 
telegrams, telephonic communications, that side by side with the 
latest developments primitive forms of inter-communication 
should be still employed. Signalling by mechanism, bird- 
messengers, and even beacon fires are yet with us—and this fact 
recalls to our minds the words of Tennyson :— 
“Men, my brothers, men the workers, ever reaping something new ; 
That which they have done but earnest of the things that they 
shall do— 
Yet I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose runs, 
And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns.” 
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 15rza, 1906. 
Forest Wife. 
BY 
Mr. MARTIN DUNCAN, 
Illustrated with Lantern Slides. 
B* being a Member of the Brighton and Hove Natural History 
Society one gets to acquire a knowledge of the intimate 
details of animal life, like Sam Weller’s knowledge of London, 
extensive and peculiar. Knowledge of this kind was freely 
imparted by the lantern lecture given by Mr. Martin Duncan. 
Mr. Duncan, who must be a naturalist of the first order, 
was trying to rear a young cuckoo. He found it as fractious 
and trying as the ordinary human baby, and it was always 
waking him in the night for food. He had a happy inspira- 
tion. He had observed that a mother thrush, when worn out, 
as all mothers do get worn out, with the exertion of feeding 
her infant, adopted a neat strategem to save herself the trouble 
of hunting for more worms and at the same time satisfying the 
cries of the baby. When the baby opened its beak to ery for 
more the mother inserted her own empty beak, and tickled the 
youngster’s palate. Baby thrush, innocent of the world’s ways, 
concluded the mother had put a nice fat worm in its mouth, 
gulped, and was quite happy,—till the next time. So Mr, 
Duncan, when tbe cuckoo cried for worms and there were none 
