FOOD OF CUCKOOS. 133 



Ordines and Genera are many of them new, expressive, and mas- 

 terly. He has ventured to alte^r some of the Linnsean genera 

 with sufficient show of reason. 



It might perhaps be mere accident that you saw so many 

 swifts and no swallows at Staines ; because, in my long observa- 

 tion of those birds, I never could discover the least degree of 

 rivalry or hostility between the species. 



Ray remarks that birds of the gallincB order, as cocks and 

 hens, partridges, and pheasants, &c. are pulveratrices, such as 

 dust themselves, using that method of cleansing their feathers, 

 and ridding themselves of their vermin. As far as I can observe, 

 many birds that dust themselves never wash : and I once thought 

 that those birds that wash themselves would never dust ; but 

 here I find myself mistaken ; for common house-sparrows are 

 great pulveratrices, being frequently seen grovelling and wallow- 

 ing in dusty roads ; and yet they are great-washers. Does not 

 the skylark dust ?* 



Query. Might not Mahomet and his followers take one me- 

 thod of purification from these pulveratrices? because I find from 

 travellers of credit that if a strict mussulman is journeying in a 

 sandy desert where no water is to be found, at stated hours he 

 strips off his clothes, and most scrupulously rubs his body over 

 with sand or dust. 



A countryman told me he had found a young fern-owl in the 

 nest of a small bird on the ground ; and that it was fed by the 

 little bird. I went to see this extraordinary phenomenon, and 

 found that it was a young cuckoo hatched in the nest of a tit- 

 lark : it was become vastly too big for its nest, appearing 



in tenui re 



and was very fierce and pugnacious, pursuing my finger, as I 

 teazed it, for many feet from the nest, and sparring and buffet- 

 ting with its wings like a game-cock. The dupe of a dam ap- 

 peared at a distance, hovering about with meat in its mouth, and 

 expressing the greatest solicitude. 



In July I saw several cuckoos skimming o^jp a large pond ; 

 and found, after some observation, that they were feeding on the 

 libellulce, or dragon-flies ; some of which they caught as they set- 

 tled on the weeds, and some as they were on the wing. Notwith- 



* It does so, and never bathes ; and the same holds with its congener the wood-lark ; whereas 

 all the pipit genus (anthui) are very partial to bathing. ED. 



