The Natural History of Selborne 273 



Induced by this assertion, we procured a cuckoo, 1 and, cutting 

 open the breast-bone, and exposing the intestines to sight, found 

 the crop lying as mentioned above. This stomach was large and 

 round, and stuffed hard, like a pincushion, with food, which, upon 

 nice examination, we found to consist of various insects ; such as 

 small scarabs, spiders, and dragon-flies ; the last of which we have 

 seen cuckoos catching on the wing as they were just emerging out 

 of the aurelia state. Among this farrago also were to be seen 

 maggots, and many seeds, which belonged either to gooseberries, 

 currants, cranberries, or some such fruit ; so that these birds 

 apparently subsist on insects and fruits ; nor was there the least 

 appearance of bones, feathers, or fur, to support the idle notion of 

 their being birds of prey. 



The sternum in this bird seemed to us to be remarkably short, 

 between which and the anus lay the crop, or craw, and immediately 

 behind that the bowels against the back-bone. 



It must be allowed, as this anatomist observes, that the crop 

 placed just upon the bowels must, especially when full, be in a very 

 uneasy situation during the business of incubation ; yet the test 

 will be to examine whether birds that are actually known to sit for 

 certain are not formed in a similar manner. This inquiry I pro- 

 posed to myself to make with a fern-owl, or goatsucker, as soon as 

 opportunity offered : because, if their formation proves the same, 

 the reason for incapacity in the cuckoo will be allowed to have been 

 taken up somewhat hastily. 



Not long after a fern-owl was procured, which, from its habit and 

 shape, we suspected might resemble the cuckoo in its internal con- 

 struction. Nor were our suspicions ill-grounded ; for, upon dissec- 

 tion, the crop, or craw, also lay behind the sternum, immediately on 

 the viscera, between them and the skin of the belly. It was bulky, 

 and stuffed hard with large phal<n<e, moths of several sorts, and 

 their eggs, which no doubt had been forced out of those insects by 

 the action of swallowing. 



1 Wherever White speaks thus in the first person plural, we may suspect the 

 letter either of being an added one, or else of being largely cooked up for publica- 

 tion. ED. 



S 



