2o8 The World-Evidence. 



parasitic as ours are, is this, that pressure as to time 

 allowed, owing to long migration, does not exist. 

 Certain of these birds are in the " breeding places " 

 from the middle of September till the very end of 

 February or the middle of March, and in some 

 seasons they have been found in numbers there in 

 the beginning of April, while others are there from 

 October to June, so that, by no stretch of imagina- 

 tion, could Jenner's reasoning be applied to them. 

 They are from five to six months, up even to eight 

 months, in these " breeding places " in Australia — 

 sometimes are resident, and again v/hen they migrate 

 do not migrate very far — only to some degrees north- 

 ward in many cases, because insect life is then more 

 abundant there. And just in the measure that mi- 

 grating distance is reduced you have the instinct 

 weakened as seen in what are called our own resident 

 birds, which always tend to move with a certain con- 

 stancy. Thus we have, in Australian cuckoos of 

 parasitic habit, as presented to us by Mr. John Gould 

 and his successors, a set of phenomena which utterly 

 knocks on the head all Mr. Darwin's reasonings de- 

 rived from Jenner, proving absolutely that a certain 

 shortness of time can have really nothing to do with 

 the original strong and determined instinct to para- 

 sitism in the cuckoo. The New Zealand evidence 

 confirms it. Sir W. L. Buller tells us that both the 

 parasitic cuckoos of New Zealand are often to be 

 found there in the end of September or beginning of 

 October, and are to be seen in the end of March, 

 sometimes so late as the first week in April. 



Sir W. L. Buller has conclusively identified the 

 bronze and the shining cuckoos. They are migratory. 



