CUCKOO. | 109 
such a statement as this of a fact, repeatedly witnessed, 
cannot be lightly received by an impartial and unwarped 
judgment. But it is further corroborated by another recorded 
instance. The Rev. Mr. Wilmot, of Morley, near Derby, wrote 
Dr. Darwin word of the occurrence of a similar fact:—In the 
month of July, 1792, he was attending some labourers on a 
farm, when one of them told him that he had observed a 
bird ‘exactly like a Cuckoo’ sitting upon a nest. This it 
must be observed is a third ev idence, all three deponents 
being perfectly unprejudiced and unbiassed. The Rev. Mr. 
Wilmot proceeds:—‘He took me to the spot; it was in an 
open fallow ground. ‘The bird was upon the nest; I stood 
and observed her some time, and was perfectly satisfied it 
was a Cuckoo....In the nest....I observed three eges. As 
I had labourers constantly at work in that field, I went 
thither every day, and always looked if the bird was there, 
but did not disturb it for seven or eight days, when I was 
tempted to drive it from the nest; and found two young 
ones that appeared to have been hatched for some days, but 
there was no appearance of the third egg.’ This circumstance 
also, is In some degree confirmatory. The other ege may 
have been that of the original framer of the nest, for we 
need not suppose with Dr. Fleming, from the previous instance, 
that the Cuckoo sometimes makes a nest for herself. ‘I then 
mentioned this extraordinary circumstance, for such I thought 
it, to Mr. and Mrs. Holy oake, of Lidiord Grange, War wick- 
He and to Miss M. Willes, who were on a ie at my 
house, and who all went to see it.—Three more witnesses 
let it be observed. ‘Very lately I reminded Mr. Holyoake of 
it, who told me he had a perfect recollection of the whole, 
and that considering it a curiosity, he walked to look at 
it several times, and was perfectly satisfied as to its being a 
Cuckoo.’ 
The note of the Cuckoo, uttered both when flying and 
perched in trees, is expressed by its name. It is often how- 
ever, varied from the plain ‘cuckoo,’ to a quicker ‘cuckoo; 
cuckoo; cuc-cuc-koo.’ Both the male and female birds utter 
it, but the latter, it may be, only seldom; though I am 
knead to think that it is equally” common to both. They 
onan besides another soft note, rendered by the syllables ‘cule, 
cule,’ uttered rapidly, and continually repeated several times; 
another exclamation of anger, and another more like the bark 
of a little dog: the young bird has a plaintive chirp. The 
