442 Cbservations on the Cuckoo. 
ticed by authors of eminence, and are suffi- 
ciently well known to the classical ornitholo- 
gist. It may be observed, however, that so 
profound has been ‘the veneration of suc- 
ceeding ages for the opinions of antiquity, 
and so unbounded the confidence in the ac- 
curacy of those collected by Aristotle on 
this particular subject, that, notwithstanding 
the great absurdity of some of them, they 
Jong continued to maintain the reputation 
they had acquired, a few slight additions and 
corrections only having been made by more 
modern writers, till the publication of Mr. 
Jenner's interesting discoveries: indeed, al- 
inost the only facts in the obscure history of 
this singular species, that seem to have been 
known with any tolerable degree of certainty, 
even towards the close of the eighteenth 
century, were, that cuckoos appear and dis- 
appear periodically ; that the call from which 
they take their name is peculiar to the male; 
that the femate lays in the nests of other birds ; 
that those birds carefully bring up the young 
cuckoo, which has a weak, plaintive chirp, 
and is very different in plumage from the old 
ones; and thatit is generally observed to be 
the sole occupier of the nest. In this state the 
history of the cuckoo remained, when Mr. 
Jenner, at the request of Mr. John Hunter, 
