102 THE NATURAL HISTORY 



LETTER IV. 



TO THE SAME. 



Selborne, Feb. 19, 1770. 

 DEAR SIR, 



YOUR observation that "the cuckoo does not deposit it's egg 

 " indiscriminately in the nest of the first bird that comes in it's 

 " way, but probably looks out a nurse in some degree congenerous, 

 "with whom to intrust it's young," is perfectly new to me ; and 

 struck me so forcibly, that I naturally tell into a train of thought 

 that led me to consider whether the fact was so, and what 

 reason there was for it. When I came to recollect and inquire, 

 I could not find that any cuckoo had ever been seen in these 

 parts, except in the nest of the wagtail, the hedge-sparrow, the 

 titlark, the white-throat, and the redbreast, all soft-billed insecti- 

 vorous birds. The excellent Mr. Willughby mentions the nest 

 of the palumbus (ring-dove), and of the J'ringilla (chaffinch}, birds 

 that subsist on acorns and grains, and such hard food : but then 

 he does not mention them as of his own knowledge ; but says 

 afterwards that he saw himself a wagtail feeding a cuckoo. 1 It 

 appears hardly possible that a soft-billed bird should subsist on 

 the same food with the hard-billed : for the former have thin 

 membranaceous stomachs suited to their soft food ; while the 

 latter, the granivorous tribe, have strong muscular gizzards, 

 which, like mills, grind, by the help of small gravels and pebbles, 

 what is swallowed. This proceeding of the cuckoo, of dropping 

 it's eggs as it were by chance, is such a monstrous outrage on 

 maternal affection, one of the first great dictates of nature ; and 

 such a violence on instinct ; that, had it only been related of 

 a bird in the Brazils, or Peru, it would never have merited our 

 belief. But yet, should it farther appear that this simple bird, 

 when divested of that natural arropy^ that seems to raise the kind 

 in general above themselves, and inspire them with extraordinary 

 degrees of cunning and address, may be still endued with a more 

 enlarged faculty of discerning what species are suitable and con- 



1 [The list of birds in whose nests the cuckoo is now known to deposit her eggs 

 is very large ; Mr. Bidwell has brought it up to 120 in the Bulletin of the British 

 Ornithological Club for March, 1896. The more usual victims are insect-eating 

 birds, such as those White mentions ; but almost all our common seed-eating 

 birds are occasionally duped. These, however, it should be noted, feed their 

 own young largely on caterpillars and other insects.] 



