480 THE CUCKOO 



occurred about thirty-two hours after birth. The depression was then 

 only just perceptible. The nestlings of the foster-parent were already 

 evicted, being found dead on the edge of the nest. The depression 

 was no longer perceptible when the cuckoo was four days and four 

 hours old. Its desire to eject ceased at the age of three days ten 

 hours. 1 According to Jenner, the cavity disappears about the twelfth 

 day, and the desire to evict " begins to decline from the time the bird 

 is two or three till it is about twelve days old, when, as far as I have 

 hitherto seen, it ceases. Indeed, the disposition for throwing out the 

 eggs appears to cease a few days sooner ; for I have frequently seen 

 the young cuckoo, after it had been hatched nine or ten days, remove 

 a nestling that had been placed in the nest with it, when it suffered 

 an egg put there at the same time to remain unmolested." 2 



One of the most remarkable features in the performance of the 

 infant cuckoo is the contrast between its normal state of flabby help- 

 lessness and its sudden transformation into one of demoniacal energy. 

 It has been compared by Mr. Hudson to the changes in a person 

 suffering from epilepsy "the sudden rigidity of muscle in some weak, 

 sickly, flabby-looking person, the powerful grip of the hand, the 

 strengthen struggling exceeding that of a man in perfect health ; and 

 finally, when this state is over, the weakness of complete exhaustion " 

 a : weakness which the young cuckoo also experiences. The apparent 

 helplessness of the young cuckoo has led some observers to conclude 

 that it is quite incapable of performing the act of ejection before it is 

 two or three days old, and they hold that eggs or nestlings found 

 ejected during the first two days, as is often the case, must be removed 

 by the parent cuckoo. 3 The latter has not been seen to do this, unless 

 we accept as good evidence that of the gardener given in the Zoologist 

 (1889, 261), who stated that he saw a cuckoo remove three nestling 

 hedge-sparrows, one by one, from a nest, and fly off with them. To 



1 Zoologist, 1905, 104. ' Op. tit., p. 220. 



3 J. A. Link, op. cit., pp. 171, 170-77 ; ZooloyM, 1873, 3473 (C. A. Smith, who quotes Dybowski, 

 Journal filr Ornithologie, 1871, 303); Mem. Soc. Xool. France, 1895 (X. Raspail); J. H. Gurney, 

 Economy of the Cuckoo ; Science Gossip, 1868, May 1. 



