14 About the Feathered Folk. 



Goldfinches would kill a baby 

 Cuckoo in a week by stuffing it 

 with food unfitted for its digestion. 

 Starlings would choke it by some 

 ponderous dainty no well-bred 

 scansores (which is the family name 

 of Cuckoos) could endure. But 

 pied-wagtails and pipits and robins 

 are exactly fitted to be foster-fathers 

 and mothers to the nurslings which 

 mistress Cuckoo intends throwing 

 upon the cold world's charity. 



When her eggs are laid (upon the 

 bare ground, as she has no soft and 

 cunning cradle prepared for them 

 by herself) she lifts them in her 

 bill they are extremely small, 

 these eggs, compared with the size 

 of the bird and deposits them 

 in the selected nests. And ten- 

 derly the poor little woodland birds 

 accept them as their own. 



The egg is about the size of a 

 skylark's : the creature that is 

 hatched from it must appear 



