102 CUCKOO. 
continued so to do with the utmost care, bestowing every 
possible attention, and manifesting the greatest anxiety to 
satisfy its continual craving for food. 
The following is a still more extraordinary instance, cor- 
roborating the above, and for the truth of which we can 
vouch in every particular:—‘A young Thrush, Just able to feed 
itself, had been placed in a cage; a short time afterwards, a 
young Cuckoo, which could not feed itself, was introduced 
into the same cage, a large wicker one, and for some time 
it was with much difficulty fed; at length, however, it was 
observed that the young Thrush was employed in feeding it, 
the Cuckoo opening its mouth and sitting on the upper perch, 
and making the Thrush hop down to fetch food up. One 
day, when ‘it was thus expecting its food in this way, the 
Thrush seeing a worm put into the cage could not resist the 
temptation of eating it, upon which the Cuckoo immediately 
descended from its perch, and attacking the Thrush, literally 
tore one of its eyes quite out, and then hopped back: the 
poor Thrush felt itself obliged to take up some food in the 
lacerated state it was in. The eye healed in course of time, 
and the Thrush continued its occupation as before, till the 
Cuckoo was full grown.’ 
Mr. Jesse too, in his ‘Gleanings in Natural History,’ relates 
the following circumstance as having occurred at Arbury, in 
Warwickshire, the seat of Francis Newdigate, Esq., the account 
having been written down at the time by a lady who witnessed 
it:—‘In the early part of the summer of 1828, a Cuckoo, 
having previously turned out the eggs from a Water-Wagtail’s 
nest, which was built in a small hole in a garden wall at 
Arbury, deposited her own egg in their place. When the 
egg was hatched, the young intruder was fed by the Water- 
Wagtails, till he became too bulky for his confined and 
narrow quarters, and in a fidgetty fit he fell to the ground. 
In this predicament he was found by the gardener, who 
picked him up, and put him into a wire cage, which was 
placed on the top of the wall, not far from the place of 
his birth. Here it was expected that the Wagtails would 
have followed there supposititious offspring with food, to 
support it in its imprisonment; a mode of proceeding which 
would have had nothing very uncommon to recommend it to 
notice. But the odd part of the story is, that the bird 
which hatched the Cuckoo never came near it; but her place 
was supplied by a Hedge-Sparrow, who performed her part 
