A YOUNG CUCKOO 73 



without harm. Whence should it have this ferocity 

 of temperament so strange in a young bird, and 

 found in such, I believe, only among some birds of 

 prey ? Has it assumed with the stripes of the hawk 

 the spirit of the hawk also ? What should be the 

 inward impulse prompting it ? what the outward 

 conditions that called it forth? In the young of 

 predaceous birds it is the expression of a character 

 they bear with them through life ; but in after-life this 

 hawk-like creature would set itself to seek out its small 

 fare of caterpillars, hunted, rather than hunting, for the 

 the remainder of its days. What will then become of its 

 fighting spirit ? What end can it serve even now ? 



This is that same spirit that set it, when but a few 

 days old, to heave out of the foster-nest its foster- 

 parent's eggs. We know with what unnatural 

 violence and momentary intensification of strength 

 this is done ; we know the exhaustion that ensues. 

 Here are both now in the bird that has no longer 

 any eggs to eject, nor any foster-brethren to get rid 

 of the same violence and concentration of force, the 

 same collapse when the mood has passed. 



It is stated by Mr. Hudson in his excellent account 

 of the young Cuckoo, that the back is peculiarly 

 irritable until the fifth day after hatching, and that 

 pressure of egg or young upon this part arouses the 

 fury and calls forth the strength with which either is 

 ejected from the nest. Upon the fifth day the 

 irritability is said to be lost, and the young Cuckoo 

 to suffer pressure without resentment. There thus 

 arises an impression that physical pressure upon the 

 young Cuckoo's back is the cause of its almost cata- 

 leptic violence and strength, so that one might imagine 



