THE CUCKOO HABIT 163 



the dangerous-looking mate is being chased away. 

 Other Indian cuckoos, on the other hand, succeed by 

 virtue of their exact resemblance to the destined host, 

 a resemblance that can never aid our only practitioner 

 of the foisting art. 



If the impish human experimenter tries the effect 

 of putting canaries' eggs into chaffinches' nests and of 

 exchanging the eggs of robins and wagtails, he fails 

 in a large proportion of cases to secure adoption, 

 while the cuckoo hardly ever fails. Every parish 

 has its one or two chanters of the familiar and 

 typical spring song, and few districts have more than 

 the average share, though Sir Herbert Maxwell's sister 

 has counted as many as fourteen at once feeding on 

 currant-moth caterpillars in her Renfrewshire garden. 

 The wonder is, not that there are so many cuckoos, but 

 that there are not many more. If the bird lays only 

 the five eggs of the average small bird, she has a five 

 times better chance than any one of them of bringing 

 four of them up. She must, in order to succeed, show 

 not the least solicitude for the welfare of her progeny 

 and no cuckoo has been known to wreck the scheme 

 by paying furtive visits to see whether the egg is still 

 in the nest, or whether the chick has duly ejected its 

 foster-sisters. In some books the story is vaguely 

 told that once a pair of cuckoos built a nest in 

 England and reared their own progeny. We do not 

 believe that such a thing occurred within the period 

 of human history. Long before man appeared on 

 the planet the cuckoo habit was perfected and sealed 

 by complete callousness, and the way of return to an 

 honester mode of life seems to be barred beyond 

 hope. The cuckoo that took suddenly to house- 



