184 Darwin and Roninius dealt witJi. 



one for itself; but no, e\ery one he scrambled for, 

 went down the cuckoo's throat, never apparently 

 swallowing one himself. Strange to say, one of the 

 Cardinals (Pope, South America) has taken charge of 

 the cuckoo, and is feeding it well." " Eventually," 

 added Mr. Speedy, " it picked up its food for itself, 

 and up till the end of October seemed to thrive, but 

 on the night of the 30th of that month several de- 

 grees of frost were encountered, and the following 

 morning the lady wrote, ' I saw at once he was 

 doomed, but his end was so gentle that he really 

 seemed to sleep away.' " 



Dr. Russel Wallace's doctrine, that arguments from 

 creatures under artificial conditions are not absolute 

 as regards the same creatures in wild nature, may 

 here apply, but assuredly this present case has the 

 strictest analogy in " wild nature." I had oppor- 

 tunity of watching a wren engaged in the hard 

 task of feeding a young cuckoo. The cock bird not 

 putting in an appearance, I supposed it had met with 

 a mishap and been killed. The wren was actually 

 starved by the efforts to satisfy the young cuckoo, 

 and one morning, when happily I was observing, fell 

 off the branch of a maple tree, dead — the stomach 

 quite empty. Before very long (within three-quarters 

 of an hour), the cries of the young cuckoo, which 

 were incessant, very loud, and pitiful, brought a 

 couple of meadow-pipits, who took on themselves 

 the hard and ungrateful business of feeding the 

 youngster. 



More than this, the above instance, given by INIr. 

 Tom Speedy, supplemented by observations of my 

 own, suffice to show that birds of various species 



