132 BEYOND THE PASTURE BARS 



this is better than the mean shift of the English 

 cuckoo; for this cousin cuckoo of England not 

 only builds no nest, but slips around and when 

 nobody is looking, leaves its eggs in other birds' 

 nests, and goes off care-free! It will do still 

 worse : it will eat the eggs of the other bird ; leave 

 its own egg in the empty nest, and thus fool the 

 foster mother, after robbing her, into hatching 

 out and feeding a child that does not belong to 

 her. 



Our own cuckoo is not so bad as that, although 

 his lazy nest looks as if he would like to be, or in- 

 deed, might be, if he did keep watch on his lazy, 

 makeshift habits. And it is said, by those who 

 may know, too, that our cuckoo steals other birds' 

 eggs, and sometimes lays its own eggs in robins' 

 and catbirds' nests. 



Now our cow-bird (one of the blackbird family) 

 does that, but I have never found our cuckoo at it. 

 He may, sometimes ; still I have never seen him ; 

 whereas I have often found him with his own nest 

 and eggs very strong evidence in his favor. We 

 are all quick to see evil, and to remember ill. A 

 bad name is hard to bury. I think our cuckoo suf- 

 fers for the evil done by his cousin over seas ; for 

 surely it was of this foreign cuckoo that I was 



