Not well based. 107 



the owls lay their eggs at intervals quite as long as 

 the cuckoo, or even longer than the cuckoo, according 

 to Darwin, and the owlets first hatched help to hatch 

 the other eggs. This indeed is done, as just said, in 

 all cases of birds more or less. Further, the cuckoo's 

 stay in this country is no briefer than that of some 

 of the swallows or the exquisite little garden-warbler, 

 yet the swallows and the garden-warbler contri\'e 

 easily to bring off a brood and sometimes even two 

 broods. Thus (and there are yet other arguments 

 which would take us into too technical matters) Mr. 

 Darwin's explanations are not well based, in some 

 points seem even ignorant, and in certain respects 

 explain nothing but his own limitedness and utter 

 lack of power to grasp the difficulties that he per- 

 ceives and wrongly fancies that he at least partially 

 meets and explains away. The difficulties remain 

 after all his efforts have been made. 



Further, we may make bold to ask, what is so very 

 out of the way in expecting this of the cuckoo, when 

 the blackcap, which comes later than the cuckoo, and 

 has a nest to build and courting besides to do, in 

 which he is indeed a proficient, has eggs in the earlier 

 half of May ? Dr. Bowdler Sharpe says that he has 

 found hard-set eggs of the blackcap as early as the 

 1 2th of May." '■'•' 



Even the night-jar, with but two eggs, does not /or 

 this reason hatch them both absolutely at once. We 

 have found the little young one for all the world like 

 a tuft of fur torn from a rabbit's breast, and left 

 almost imperceptibly wavering there in a slight gust 

 of wdnd beside the other egg ; and this is true also 



* Allen's Handbook of Birds, ad loc. 



