140 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 



the defect of natural affection in the ostrich, may be well applied 

 to the bird we are talking of : 



" She is hardened against her young ones, as though they were 

 not hers : 



" Because God hath deprived her of wisdom, neither hath He 

 imparted to her understanding." * 



Query. Does each female cuckoo lay but one egg in a season, 

 or does she drop several in different nests according as opportunity 

 offers ? l 



I am, etc. 



NOTE TO LETTER IV. 



1 I have found so many cuckoos' eggs in a district where there were but a 

 limited number of cuckoos, that I am satisfied it lays several eggs. The egg 

 of the cuckoo is small for the size of the bird, yet it often looks a monster in 

 some of the nests in which it is deposited, such as sedge-warblers and reed-wrens. 

 Three times at least it has been found in a grasshopper warbler's, where the 

 foot or the beak must have been the agent in transferring the egg after being laid 

 into the nest. One July at Wroxham Broad in Norfolk, there were thirty or 

 forty cuckoos flying restlessly about from tree to tree, and uttering frequently 

 a treble cry ; thus : cuck-cuckoo cuck- cuckoo. A week later they were all 

 gone. 



LETTER V. 



SELBORNE, April I2t/i, 1770. 



DEAR SIR, I heard many birds of several species sing last year 

 after Midsummer; enough to prove that the summer solstice is 

 not the period that puts a stop to the music of the woods. The 

 yellow-hammer no doubt persists with more steadiness than any 

 other } but the woodlark, the wren, the redbreast, the swallow, the 

 white-throat, the goldfinch, the common linnet, are all undoubted 

 instances of the truth of what I advanced. 



If this severe season does not interrupt the regularity of the 

 summer migrations, the black- cap will be here in two or three days. 

 * Job xxxix 1 6, 17. 



