DWELLINGS 1605 



is not possible to plead extenuating circumstances. 

 They occupy a place in an inhabited house without 

 paying any sort of rent. Every one knows the 

 cuckoo's audacity. The female lays her eggs in dif- 

 ferent nests and troubles herself no further about 

 their fate. She seeks for her offspring a shelter 

 which she does not take the trouble to construct, and 

 moreover at the same time assures for them the care 

 of a stranger in place of her own. 



In North America a kind of starling, the Molo- 

 thrus pecoris, commonly called the cowbird, acts in 

 the same careless fashion. It lives in the midst of 

 herds, and owes its specific name to this custom; it 

 feeds on the parasites on the skin of cattle. This 

 bird constructs no nest. At the moment of laying the 

 female seeks out an inhabited dwelling, and when the 

 owner is absent she furtively lays an egg there. The 

 young intruder breaks his shell after four days' in- 

 cubation, that is to say, usually much before the 

 legitimate children; and the parents, in order to si- 

 lence the beak of the stranger who, without shame, 

 claims his share with loud cries, neglect their own 

 brood which have not yet appeared, and which they 

 abandon. 



The habits of the Molothrus bovariensis, a closely 

 allied Argentine cowbird, have been carefully stud- 

 ied by Mr. W. H. Hudson, who has also some inter- 

 esting remarks as to the vestiges of the nesting instinct 

 in this interesting parasitical bird, which is con- 

 stantly dropping eggs in all sorts of places, even on 

 the ground, most of them being lost. Mr. Hudson 

 suggests that this bird lost the nest-making instinct 



