THE CUCKOO CONTKOVEKSY 15 



statuesque attitude, as he sat with his head thrown well 

 back, the light glinting on his hard polished feathers, 

 black and white and crimson, the setting in which he 

 appeared of greenest translucent leaves and hoary bark 

 and open sunlit space, all together made him seem 

 not only our handsomest woodpecker, but our most 

 beautiful bird. I had seen him at his best, and sitting 

 there motionless amid the wind-fluttered leaves, he was 

 like a bird-figure carved from some beautiful vari- 

 coloured stone. 



The most interesting events in animal life observed 

 at this spot relate to the cuckoo in the spring of 1900. 

 Some time before this Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace said, 

 in the course of a talk we had, that he very much 

 wanted me to find out exactly what happened in a 

 nest in which a young cuckoo was hatched. It was, 

 I replied, an old, old story what could I see, supposing 

 I was lucky enough to find a nest where I could 

 observe it properly, more than Jenner, Hancock, Mrs. 

 Hugh Blackburn, and perhaps other writers, had told 

 us ? Yes, it was an old story, he said, and he wanted 

 it told again by some one else. People had lately been 

 discrediting Jenner's account, and as to the other chief 

 authority I had named, one writer, a Dr. Creighton, 

 had said, " As for artists like Mrs. Blackburn, they can 

 draw what they please all out of their own brains: 

 we can't trust them, or such as them." Sober-minded 

 naturalists had come to regard the habit and abnormal 



