THE CUCKOO 481 



this may l>c added tin- Matrint'iit of tlu> iranlnuT. quoted hy Mr. 11. 

 II. (Jotlwin Austen, that on one occasion he found three young wag- 

 tails, two of tin-in dead, and one egg, lying outside a nest in a green- 

 house, the young cuckoo being at the time scarcely out of its shell. 



\v ;m ;i,lllll curUno had lcrii xrrli nil III. .If 1)1:111 (Mir orraMoii I.. 



* uter the greenhouse, it was assumed to have made the eviction. 

 Another example is provided by Herr Adolf Walter. He found a 

 wren's nest containing a cuckoo just born, and, on the ground, four 

 wren's eggs. The eggs were put back, and were not ejected while 

 Herr Walter remained in observation. Next day the eggs were again 

 found outside, and were put back, with the same result. In the after- 

 noon, however, they were found once more ejected. They were put 

 back a third time, and were not ejected. At the end of eight days 

 they were still in the nest On the strength of this by no means con- 

 clusive evidence, M. TL Raspail, in quoting it, goes so far as to make 

 the following somewhat premature assertion : " Thus disappears from 

 ornithological biology this legend which represents the young cuckoo 

 as the murderer of his fellow-nestlings." 



A further argument in favour of the view that those ejections which 

 take place before the young cuckoo is two days old are performed by 

 the parent cuckoo is supplied by the following facts quoted by Herr 

 Link. A brood of young robins and a young cuckoo were born on the 

 same day. The former were found lying outside the nest all alive. 

 They were replaced. Next morning they had completely disappeared, 

 the young cuckoo being still in the nest. As the latter could not have 

 carried its victims away out of sight, the inference made is that they 

 were removed by the parent cuckoo, if not by the parent robin. 3 This 

 overlooks the possibility of their having been ejected by the young 

 cuckoo, and the bodies subsequently carried away by mice or nits. 



A more cogent argument is supplied by the fact that when nest- 

 lings or eggs are found lying outside the nest and put back, it some- 

 times happens that no attempt is made to re-evict them by young 



1 Aftmotra* de la SocVU Zoolofique dt France, 1806, M. * Link, op. /., pp. 170-77. 



