124 Darwin and Romanes dealt with. 



have said already) accepted almost implicitly Jenner's 

 statements and explanations. From my own obser- 

 vations and those of several others, I am doubtful if 

 cuckoos do not lay a greater number of eggs than is 

 generally supposed, and, in a general way, at inter- 

 vals of two days at most ; this is nothing extraor- 

 dinary, and certainly it is extraordinary to learn that 

 any bird is fed by the parents or foster-parents for 

 jive or six weeks after it flew/'' 



Dr. Rey, the great German oologist, to whom we 

 have already referred, quoted by Dr. Bowdler Sharpe 

 (Allen's Naturalist's Library, *'Cuckoo,") declares that 

 cuckoos lay as many as twenty or twenty-one eggs, 

 and within intervals of each other much shorter than 

 is generally believed. Dr. Bowdler Sharpe puts a 

 mark of exclamation at this, which, no doubt, is 

 meant to undo the effect of his quoting it, and yet if 

 it was deserving only of silent discredit, was it really 

 worth his while in using up his valuable space with it ? 



Mr. Gurney agrees that the cuckoo lays a much 

 greater number of eggs than is usually beHeved. 



Colonel Irby tells us that " a female (cuckoo), shot 



* " The American cuckoo " (it should be cuckoos) " being well 

 known to build its nest and rear its young in the ordinary 

 manner" (Romanes's Animal Intelligence, p. 301). And "that 

 the small size of the egg is a real case of adaptation in order to 

 deceive the small birds (in whose nest it is laid), we may infer 

 from the fact of the non-parasitic American cuckoo laying full- 

 sized eggs." (p. 306.) All which is wrong for the inference 

 cannot be drawn unless blindly — the American cuckoos — the 

 two commoner American ones — being largely parasitic, and de- 

 positing their eggs in the nests of larger birds than our cuckoo, 

 as is the case with the Egyptian cuckoo and the Indian koel ; 

 so that the imaginary fact here based on can give no reason for 

 parasitism at all. 



