THE CUCKOO. 225 



German rightly, he states that, with a view to 

 insure the preservation of species which would 

 otherwise be exposed to danger, Nature has 

 endowed every hen Cuckoo with the faculty of 

 laying eggs similar in colour to those of the 

 species in whose nest she lays, in order that they 

 may be less easily detected by the foster 

 parents, and that she only makes use of the 

 nest of some other species (i.e. of one whose 

 eggs do not resemble her own) when, at the time 

 she is ready to lay, a nest of the former descrip- 

 tion is not at hand. This statement, which 

 concludes a long and interesting article on the 

 subject in the German ornithological journal 

 " Naumannia," for 1853, has deservedly attracted 

 much attention. English readers were presented 

 with an epitome of this article by Mr. Dawson 

 Rowley in the "Ibis" for 1865, and the Rev. 

 A. C. Smith, after bringing it to the notice of 

 the Wiltshire Archaeological Society in the same 

 year, published a literal translation of it in the 

 "Zoologist" for 1868. More recently, an article 

 on the subject, by Professor Newton, appeared 



Q 



