452 Observations en the Cuckoo. 
if Mr. Jenner means to assert (and this, I 
think, is the only rational explanation that 
his language admits) that birds, during the 
breeding season, can produce eggs at will, 
and that they may be excited to lay in stc- 
cession many more than their usual number, 
by daily removing one from their nests, he is 
certainly mistaken: Colonel Montagu’s ex- 
periments,* as well as my own, decidedly 
prove the contrary, both with regard to wild 
and domestic birds. 
As cuckoos deposit a single egg only in the 
same nest, they have been thought, by most 
persons, to lay no more than one. Mr. Jenner, 
on the contrary, supposes, from an examin- 
ation of the ovary in a bird that had just 
commenced laying, and from having observed 
that cuckoos’ eggs are occasionally laid about 
the time that the old birds disappear, that 
they produce a large number. With due 
deference to such high authority as Mr. Jenner, 
1 think there are sufficient reasons for be- 
Nieving, that both these extremes are errone- 
ous. According to Montagu,t whose opinion 
is founded on the dissection of breeding fe- 
males, cuckoos lay from four to six eggs; 
‘* Omithologieal Dictionary, Introduction, p, 16, and following. 
+ ‘Ornithological Dictionary, Introduction, p, 8, and following. 
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