444 REPTILES AND BIKDS. 
themselves to a cage; but they are always troublesome, on account 
of their quarrelsome habits, which prevents them from living caged 
with feathered companions. ; 
Cuckoos are celebrated for the peculiar manner in which they 
raise their progeny. The females do not build a nest or cover 
their eggs, neither do they take care of their young. They lay 
their eggs in the nests of other birds, generally in those of little 
insectivorous Passerines, such as the Lark, the Robin, Hedge Sparrow, 
Redthroat, Nightingale, Thrush, Blackbird, and sometimes also in 
those of the Magpie, Turtle-Dove, and Wood Pigeon. They leave 
the care of hatching their eggs, even of feeding their young unul 
they are completely developed, to these strangers. Different explana- 
tions have been imagined to justify the anomaly of the cuckoo 
being a hard-hearted mother. We owe to M. Florenf-Prevost the 
possession of certain information on this point which had long re- 
mained in obscurity. According to this naturalist, Cuckoos are poly- 
gamous, but in a reverse sense to other birds. Whilst among them 
males have several wives, with Cuckoos it is the females that have 
several husbands, because the stronger sex is much more numerous 
than the weaker. ‘These ladies, as might be expected of creatures. 
with such proclivities, have no fixed home. At the breeding-time 
they wander from one district to another, reside two or three days 
with a mate at one place, and then abandon him, according to incli- 
nation. It is at this time that the males so frequently utter the cry 
known to all the world, and from which the bird derives its name ; 
it is a pleading call of love to the females, which in their turn 
reply by kind responsive notes. Cuckoos lay eight or ten eggs in 
the space of a few weeks. When an egg has been laid, the female 
seizes it in her beak, and carries it to the first unoccupied nest in 
the vicinity, and there deposits it, profiting by the absence of the 
proprietor, which would certainly oppose such an addition. A 
Redthroat has been seen to return unexpectedly, and force the 
stranger to retire with her burden. The next egg is placed in a 
neighbouring nest, but never in the same as the first. The mother 
is doubtlessly conscious of the unfortunate position she would place 
her two nurslings in if she acted otherwise, for it would certainly be 
impossible for two little Passerines to supply the wants of two such 
voracious fledglings as young Cuckoos. Pertinent to this, we will 
mention a fact that we have not seen stated in any work on natural 
history. It often happens that the female Cuckoo takes from the 
nest one of the eggs of the Passerine, breaks it with her beak, and 
scatters the shell. Thus, when the mother returns, she finds the 
