CUCKOO, THE KAIN PKOPHET 173 



full number lias been reached. The cuckoo, however, often 

 allows a few days to pass after she begins setting on some 

 of the eggs before the others are deposited. Thus there 

 are sometimes found a young bird, an incubated egg, and 

 a freshly laid egg, all in the same nest. 



Among the branches of our fruit trees we may sometimes 

 see large webs which have been 

 made by the tent-caterpillars. 

 An invading host seems to have 

 come and pitched its tents 

 among the boughs on all sides. Caterpillars 

 are quite destructive to trees, and the cuckoos 

 do us a great favor by coming often to raid the 

 encampment. They pull the little hairy intruders 

 out of their tents by hundreds, and eat them. So 

 many are eaten by these birds that their stomachs 

 are often found to be thickly coated with a layer 

 of caterpillar hairs. Cuckoos also eat grasshop- 

 pers and different kinds of flies. 



In some parts of the United States, especially in the 

 South, the surface of the country is quite level and the soil 

 is of sand. There are found here large tracts of pine wood- 

 land, sometimes with no other kinds of trees growing near. 

 In these great pine forests the cuckoos are seldom seen; 

 and in such regions, if we wish to find them, we must search 



