110 CUCKOO. 
female, as I imagine it to be, has also a very different note, 
which I can best liken, so at least I did most carefully some 
years ago, when I heard it, to the words ‘witchet-witchet- 
watchet.’ This note, preceded immediately by the ordinary 
‘cuckoo,’ I heard myself most distinctly uttered from the 
throat of one and the same individual bird, flying only a 
few yards from me, over an open field, so that there could 
be no possibility of any mistake; and this undoubted fact may 
possibly suffice to set at rest the unfounded supposition that 
the female Cuckoo does not ery ‘cuckoo; for I have not yet 
heard it theorized that the male bird utters the note in 
question, which has been described as a ‘harsh chatter.’ The 
Italian proverb says, ‘1 fatti sono maschii, le parole femine’— 
‘Facts are masculine, talk is feminine:’ one is worth a hundred 
baseless fancies. 
That both the male and female utter the word ‘cuckoo,’ is 
also thought by Mr. Yarrell, and most decidedly maintained 
by Mr. Blyth, who gives in the ‘Magazine of Natural History,’ 
vol. vil, page 829, one unquestionable instance of a female 
having been shot while in the act of repeating the well-known 
note. The Cuckoo has been heard singing its song at night, 
near Ryde, in the Isle of Wight, by T. Bell Salter, Hsq., at 
nine, ten, and eleven o’clock; and on one occasion it was con- 
tinued, as he was informed, till two o’clock in the morning. 
Another has been heard to commence its song at a quarter- 
past two; and another at half-past three. At times, and 
especially, it is said, in warm weather, it sings all through 
the night, even though there be no moon. A young Cuckoo 
has been known to repeat the note of a Titlark, by whom it 
had been so far educated. The note of the Cuckoo, like that 
of other great vocalists, is much affected by the weather; in 
times of drought it becomes hoarse, but is mollified again by 
the summer shower. 
At this stage of the account of the Cuckoo, its nidification 
should be described; but, as is so well known, there is none 
to describe. It deposits its parasitical eggs in the nest of 
some other small bird, for which they are not too large, being 
singularly small in proportion to its own size—just one-quarter 
what they should be in proportion to those of small birds 
than which they are themselves four times larger. If the 
Cuckoo’s egg were larger than it is, it would require to be 
laid in a larger nest, with the natural possessors of which, 
the young one, as Mr. Selby points out, would be, or might 
