PARASITICAL HABITS IN CUCULIDH—BARRETT. 491 
It is thought by some naturalists to be highly probable that the 
food eaten by birds during the nesting period has much to do with 
the future coloration of their eggs, and, if such be the case, it goes far 
to explain the similarity between the eggs of many species of cuckoos 
and those of their foster parents, for it follows that the latter would 
rear the alien chicks upon the same food on which they would have 
fed their own offspring. The stomach of a female bronze cuckoo 
(C’. plagosus) shot at Olinda Creek last September was found, on 
dissection, to contain the remains of a number of the large green 
caterpillars of the cup moth (Pelora) and the emperor gun moth 
(Antherea eucalypti). In the oviduct was a soft-shelled egg, on 
which the beautiful bronze-green tint characterizing the eggs of this 
species was just becoming visible. I have watched closely several 
young bronze cuckoos being fed by blue wrens and various species 
of Acanthizw, and in many instances have noticed that the devoted 
little nurses were attempting to satisfy the voracious appetites of 
their charges with lepidopterous larve of a greenish hue. 
With reference to a recently made suggestion that the action of the 
infant cuckoo in ejecting its nest fellows is purely automatic,? 
rhythmic, and governed by external stimuli or reflex action, I still 
cling to the belief that the process is referable to hereditary instinct 
or subconscious memory, aided by dawning reason. I am strength- 
ened further in my conclusions by comparing notes with other or-_ 
nithologists in various parts of the world. Mr. Edward Step, 
F. L. S., in his essay on “The Cuckoo,” distinctly stated that 
“shortly after birth the young cuckoo shows that it has inherited 
the knowledge that its foster parents will have all they can manage 
to satisfy its own wants, and that the presence of nest. fellows 
means overcrowding and inevitable death for the majority, should 
they be allowed to remain.” My friend, Mr. W. Percival Westell, 
M. B. O. U., a well-known British ornithologist who has devoted 
years of study to elucidating the habits and life history of the 
European cuckoo (C. canorus), writes that his observations lead him 
to credit the blind nestling with hereditary reasoning powers, and 
that he agrees almost entirely with my theories on the subject as set 
forth in a previous paper published in The Emu, Vol. 5, Part 1, 
July, 1905. Mr. Westell has been kind enough to forward me copies 
of his series of remarkable cuckoo photographs, which were ex- 
hibited recently before the Royal Society of Great Britain. 
I was fortunate enough to witness a miniature combat between 
a narrow-billed bronze cuckoo nestling and a baby blue wren, which 
took place in a nest of the last-named species at Olinda Creek in 
November, 1904. A snapshot of the struggle by Mr. C. P. Kinane 
@The Emu, Vol. 5, p. 145. 
