A NATURAL HISTORY OF THE CUCKOO. 59 
tion. The same modification also suffices to account for the small 
proportional size of the Cuckoo’s egg, which adapts it to the size 
of the nest into which it is laid. 
The Cuckoo deposits its egg in a great variety of nests, both of 
granivorous and insectivorous birds, though more frequently the 
latter. This fact is interesting, as some of the species to which it 
is confided, as the Linnet and Green Grosbeak, rear their own off- 
spring exclusively on macerated vegetable food disgorged from the 
craw. But the following narrative will tend to throw some light 
upon the matter. In The Field Naturalist’s Magazine we read 
that “2a Cuckoo was found, just hatched, in the nest of a Hedge 
Chanter. It was immediately taken from thence, and placed in a 
cage containing a hen Canary. The birds agreed perfectly well; 
but,” it is remarked, “ what is most singular, when the proper food 
for the Cuckoo (small caterpillars, &c.) was placed in the cage, the 
Canary fed its young charge with that, although she herself kept to 
the hempseed, &c., to which she had been accustomed.’ Dr. Jen- 
ner, however, found in the stomachs of some young Cuckoos that 
had been nurtured by seed-eating birds the remains of vegetable’ 
diet. 
The most usual foster-parents of the Cuckoo are the Pipits and 
Wagtails, and where these are less numerous, the Hedge Chanter ; 
the Larks, the different Buntings, the Robin, the Whin Chat, and 
Stone Chat, and the several aquatic warblers (Salicaria) are also 
not unfrequently selected. The Greenfinch and Linnet, the Chaf- 
finch, the Common Shrike, and Blackbird, more rarely ; and the 
Turtle Dove, and even the Jay, have been mentioned. Instances 
have likewise occurred of its intrusion into the domed nest of a 
Willow Wren, which is torn and shattered by the operation. 
The object of the last remark is to show that the Cuckoo actually 
lays its eggs into the nests which receive them, never carrying one 
about in its mouth, and so introducing it, as Levaillant affirms to be 
the case with the small Emerald Cuckoos of South Africa. In the 
very numerous instances which I have known of the occurrence of 
the Cuckoo’s egg, not one has happened where it could not have been 
laid into the nest ; though I have reason to believe that it sometimes 
may be dropped in, as Mr. Ord affirms to be the case occasionally 
with the North American Molothrah (or “ Cow Bunting,” another 
parasitic species) as intimated by the fact of its breaking any other 
egg on which it may chance to fall.* The Cuckoo, however, inva- 
* Since writing this, I have accidentally met with the fragment of a leaf 
