153 Mr. C. F. M. Swynnerton on Rejections [Ibis, 



alone. At the same time it would be the natural develop- 

 ment iu response to desertion, and Major Meiklejohn's 

 record o£ the Hedge-Sparrow's nest, in which the host's eggs 

 were less incubated than the Cuckoo's, does not stand alone, 

 Mr. Ivy records finding a nest of Andropadus importunus con- 

 taining an egg of Cuculus clamosus, slightly incubated, and 

 two of the host's, fresh. A still better observation by the 

 same naturalist was one in which a partly incubated egg of 

 C. solitarius was placed in a nest which the day before had 

 contained only two fresh Cossypha caffra eggs. It seems, 

 obvious, therefore, that intervention has to be reckoned 

 with. 



After hatching comes the ejection of the fellow-nestlings, 

 and here I might lay stress on two points that have been 

 insufficiently emphasized, I think, in the one or two descrip- 

 tions I have seen of the process. One is that the young bird 

 is not simply shot out of the nest by an upward heave — the 

 impression that one is, perhaps, given ; but that, except in 

 a shallow nest, there is a display of the greatest will and 

 endurance — Rodin might well take a blind young Cuckoo as 

 the subject for a statue personifying those qualities. Pauses, 

 during which both victim and murderer ask. for food and 

 probably, in nature, get it — as they did from me, — punctuated 

 in my experiments what'was sometimes a tedious operation, 

 but one during which the young Cuckoo, as I have said else- 

 where, did not give back a millimetre of the ground gained 

 until it finally tumbled its victim over the side. Then comes 

 the second point I have referred to. My Cuckoo, at any 

 rate, on bringing about this result^ would climb, backwards, 

 right to the top of the nest if he were not there already, and, 

 leaning over or even almost hanging down, would push, and 

 push, and push, into empty air with his back until he was 

 quite certain, apparently, that nothing remained to be pushed. 

 It is to be supposed that the parents would often replace the 

 nestling in the nest if it were found clinging to the outside, 

 otherwise there would be no object in this final coup-de-grdce. 

 Then the young Cuckoo would recover itself and climb down 

 again into the nest. The very highly prehensile feet, useful 



