342 THE HEDGE SPARROW. 



often in wanton sport will smash them with heartless glee. 

 They usually lay five eggs, and sit eleven days. The nest is made 

 with fine roots, dried grass, and moss, lined with long horse 

 hair. Like all nests they vary. I have got them composed of 

 dried grass and fine roots, with little hair and no moss ; others 

 with much moss and little grass. Sometimes — as with 

 humanity — over-care kills, for, on May 27th, 1858, I knew one 

 so amply lined with horse hair as to be the death of the 

 young. It was in a bush in a garden ; I knew it with five 

 eggs, but on the 27th there was only one partly-fledged young 

 one lying on its back in the nest nearly dead, with three long 

 hairs sticking out of its mouth. I tried to relieve it by pulling 

 them out, but in vain. I next tried to pull them one by one, but 

 they were so entwined round the entrails that they could not be 

 drawn, and the bird died in my hands. On opening the 

 gizzard I found the hairs round its inside, and forming a knot 

 which had collected fatty matter and refuse of food which 

 caused its death, as short hairs licked into the stomach of cattle 

 form indigestible balls and cause their death. This was one of 

 my most curious experiences in bird-nesting. I did not know 

 what came of the other four eggs or birds. Had the solitary 

 sufferer been larger I would have thought it a young cuckoo, 

 which, after ejecting the young hedge-sparrows, had been 

 choked by voraciously swallowing the hairs of its own nest as 

 described — an apt illustration of King Lear's usage by his 

 daughters, who, having parted with his sovereignty to them, 

 his fool justly tells him — 



" The hedge-sparrow fed the cuckoo so long, 

 That it had its head bit off by its young," 



for the young cuckoo edges out the young sparrows and reigns 

 in their nest alone. The cuckoo selects the hedge-sparrows' 

 nests (amongst others) to deposit her eggs; and White of 

 Selborne pertinently says — "You wonder, with good reason, 

 that the hedge-sparrows, &c, can be induced to sit on the egg 

 of the cuckoo without being scandalised at the disproportionate 

 size of the suppositious egg, but the brute creation, I suppose, 

 have very little idea of size, colour, or number. The common 

 hen, I know, when the fury of incubation is on her, will sit on 

 a single shapeless stone instead of a nest full of eggs that have 

 been withdrawn ; and a hen turkey would sit on in the empty 

 nest till she perished with hunger." I wish I had been more 

 particular with this young bird, but there is no doubt of the 



