200 CUCULID.E. 



owing to the following circumstances ? The short residence 

 this bird is allowed to make in the country where it is 

 destined to propagate its species, and the call that nature 

 has upon it, during that short residence, to produce a 

 numerous progeny. The Cuckoo's first appearance here is 

 about the middle of April, commonly on the 17th. Its 

 egg is not ready for incubation till some weeks after its 

 arrival, seldom before the middle of May. A fortnight is 

 taken up by the sitting bird in hatching the egg. The 

 young bird generally continues three weeks in the nest 

 before it flies, and the foster parents feed it more than five 

 weeks after this period; so that if a Cuckoo should be 

 ready with an egg much sooner than the time pointed 

 out, not a single nestling, even one of the earliest, would 

 be fit to provide for itself before its parent would be in- 

 stinctively directed to seek a new residence, and be thus 

 compelled to abandon its young one ; for old Cuckoos take 

 their final leave of this country the first week in July." 

 This, however, I may here remark, is not always the case. 

 The notes of the male have been heard as late as the end 

 of July. The males arrive before the females in spring, 

 and probably leave us before them in summer. The young 

 birds of the year do not go till September ; and Mr. Rodd 

 of Penzance sends me word that he has known them 

 remain in Cornwall till October. 



M. Temminck, in the Supplement to the first volume of 

 his Manual, mentions that M. Schlegel, one of the Assist- 

 ant Naturalists in the Museum at Leyden, had in a memoir 

 addressed to the Natural History Society of Harlem, sup- 

 plied details of great interest on the probable causes which 

 induce the Common Cuckoo, and all other species which 

 deposit their eggs in the nests of small insectivorous birds, 

 not to burthen themselves with the hatching or the feed- 

 ing of their young. " The principal cause alleged in the 



