110 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE 



origin of the instinct in the young bird, must be 

 held to account for the disposition shown to accept 

 accounts of it with reserve. One of the most 

 graphic sketches of the occurrence by an eye-witness 

 is that in Mr. Gould's " Birds of Great Britain." 

 The account by Mrs. Blackburn, who watched the 

 movements of the young cuckoo, is full of interest. 

 The nest under observation was that of the common 

 meadow-pipet, and it had at first two eggs in it 

 besides that of the cuckoo. " At one visit," con- 

 tinues Mrs. Blackburn, " the pipets were found to 

 be hatched, but not the cuckoo. At the next visit, 

 which was after an interval of forty-eight hours, 

 we found the young cuckoo alone in the nest, 

 and both the young pipets lying down the bank, 

 about ten inches from the margin of the nest, but 

 quite lively after being warmed in the hand. They 

 were replaced in the nest beside the cuckoo, which 

 struggled about until it got its back under one of 

 them, when it climbed backwards directly up the 

 open side of the nest, and hitched the pipet from 

 its back on to the edge. It then stood quite upright 

 on its legs, which were straddled wide apart, with 

 the claws firmly fixed half-way down the inside of 

 the nest, among the interlacing fibres of which the 

 nest was woven, and, stretching its wings apart 

 and backwards, it elbowed the pipet fairly over 

 the margin so far that its struggles took it down 

 the bank instead of back into the nest. After this 

 the cuckoo stood a minute or two, feeling back with 

 its wings, as if to make sure that the pipet was fairly 

 overboard, and then subsided into the bottom of the 

 nest." The ejected bird was replaced, but on again 

 visiting the nest on the following morning both 



