86 Further Facts and some Results. 



believe that that is alternative to sucking them and 

 taking out the shells. 



[Professor Newton uniformly spells the word 

 cuckow — we follow in extracts from his writings.] 



We do wish Professor Newton had in Eiicyclopcedia 

 Brittanica given a few references to such works, for 

 example, as Mr. Blyth's '' Monograph on the Cuckoo," 

 in the Asiatic Society Journal^ to Mr. Jerdon's section 

 on Cuckoos in his Birds of India, and to such things 

 as Captain Shelley's work on the Cuculidae. 



Mr. Emerson tells of several reliable fishermen in 

 the Norfolk Broads, who affirmed to him solemnly 

 that they had caught Mr. Cuckoo sucking duck's eggs, 

 mavis's eggs, thrushes' eggs and even reed-bunting's 

 eggs ; and Mr. Emerson adds that, in cuckoo's crops 

 he has found a yellowish substance that he can not 

 but regard as egg, and adds, " I believe cuckoos do 

 suck eggs as do most predatory birds." '•' 



On another page, Mr. Emerson says, " though I 

 never caught him in the act, I have found eggs 

 sucked that were whole before the cuckoo hopped 

 about them.f .... The marshmen say they often 

 hear the cuckoo talking to the titlarks and sedge- 

 w^arblers, the birds answering them, and then, they 

 say, they are on the look-out to suck their eggs and 

 lay their own in the nest." 



Mr. J. H. Gurney cites the evidence of Mr. H. L. 

 Wilson who, in the spring of 1880, at Powick, near 

 Worcester, took the remains of eggs out of a cuckoo's 

 crop, judged to be robins' and hedge-sparrows'. 



Mr. Wilson wrote in the Field, January 28, 1882 : 



* Birds of the Norfolk Broadland, p. 162. 

 t Birds of the Norfolk Broadland, p. 163. 



