APRIL. 99 



pursue it with angry cries. Some naturalists ima- 

 gine that they mistake it for a hawk ; but I take 

 them to be better judges, and to know a cuckoo 

 from a hawk rather better than the acutest natu- 

 ralist of them all. They have doubtless good reasons 

 for their enmity, if we could hear them ; and for 

 these reasons they pursue them often in a crowd, 

 and mob them till they sometimes completely con- 

 found them. In this situation I saw one, one sum- 

 mer day, on Bulwell Common in Nottinghamshire, 

 and ran up to it, and clapped my hat upon it ; its 

 little enemies sitting round it so blinded by their rage, 

 that, had i had another hat, I verily believe I could 

 have caught some of them too. However, when 

 they flew away, I liberated the poor cuckoo, who 

 flew upon a neighbouring tree, and soon recovered 

 sufficient composure to resume his favourite cry. I 

 say, favourite cry ; for they have another strange, 

 quaint, bubbling cry, very little noticed by natu- 

 ralists. But again to our eggs. 



If we step into the field, we find in the grass at 

 our feet the nests of various species of lark, with 

 their dark brown speckled eggs ; the whinchat's, 

 with its eggs of sea-green; and the partridge's, 

 with perhaps fifteen eggs of a deep cream colour. 

 So closely does the partridge sit during incubation, 

 that the mower often unawares cuts off its head 

 with his scythe. In the banks, now luxuriant with 

 green herbs, the yellow-hammer builds a nest of 

 grass, and lines it with fine fibrous roots and horse- 

 hair ; and lays five eggs of a palish purple, orna- 



