PSYCHOLOGICAL AND ETHICAL ASPECTS. 255 



difficulty as to the inheritance of such a freak, especially with the 

 preponderant majority of males, is certainly appreciable. The com- 

 mon difficulty of the combination of happy circumstances required 

 to insure incipent success is unusually great; the young bird has 

 its part to play as well as the parent; the habit is not generic, yet 

 obtains in related genera, and also in the widely separated starling- 

 like cowbirds. 



A truer view of the habit is that which considers it as a deliberate 

 expression of the whole constitution of the bird. 



i. The general character of the cuckoo is very significant. Brehm 

 describes it as a "discontented, ill-conditioned, passionate, in short 

 decidedly unamiable bird. ' "The note itself, and the manner in 

 which it is emitted, are typical of the bird's habits and character. 

 The same abruptness, insatiability, eagerness, the same rage, are notice- 

 able in its whole conduct." The cuckoos are notoriously unsociable, 

 even in migration individualistic. They jealously guard their terri- 

 torial "preserves," and verify in many ways the old myth that they 

 are sparrow-hawks in disguise. The parasitic habit is consonant with 

 their general character. 



2. The species consists predominantly of males. The prepon- 

 derance is probably about five to one, though one observer makes it 

 five times greater. In so male a species, it is not surprising to find 

 degenerate maternal instincts. 



3. Reproduction and nutrition, we have seen, vary inversely. The 

 love-impulses wane before those of hunger. Now there is no doubt 

 that even among greedy birds the cuckoos hold a very high rank. 

 They are remarkably insatiable, hungry, gluttonous. Even the ana- 

 tomical conditions asserted by some to be important, the swollen 

 low-set stomach, may have their influence in the cuckoo, which has 

 certain other peculiarities, though the same conditions may be over- 

 come in other birds which remain perfectly natural. It might almost 

 be suggested, that the habit of feeding so largely as cuckoos do on 

 hairy caterpillars, whose indigestible hairs form a fretwork in the giz- 

 zard, may also have its irritant, gizzard-fretting, dyspeptic influence. 

 But the main point is, that in a bird with so strong nutritive impulses, 

 it is little wonder the reproductive emotions are degenerate. There is 

 too much hunger and gluttony for the higher development of love. 



4. The reproductive relations of the sexes are at a lower level than 

 polygamy, or rather polyandry. The males and females do not pair 

 in the strict sense, there is no keeping company, though the males are 

 said to be passionate during the breeding-season. Nor is the female in 

 its adult state externally distinguishable from the male. 



