1 64 THE ROLL OF THE SEASONS 



keeping would make a hopeless failure of her 

 incubation or the feeding of her progeny, and would 

 at every stage run a far greater risk than her much- 

 experienced neighbours of falling in the clutch of the 

 crow, the hawk, and innumerable other dangers. 

 Meanwhile, the rival of her own species would have 

 her five children, heirs to the vitality acquired in an 

 irresponsible life of vagabondage, safely boarded out 

 with capable nurses, who could be relied upon to 

 bring them safely up even at the cost of their own 

 lives. And as there is evidently no half-way house 

 between full maternity and parasitism, the cuckoos 

 seem destined to remain cuckoos to the end of time. 



The descent into cuckoodom can be shown to be 

 just as easy as ascent out of it is difficult. Every 

 season some one or another comes across an instance 

 of laxness in the nesting arrangement of some bird 

 that seems to point in this dangerous direction. It 

 behoves every bird to maintain jealously the pride of 

 individualism, to insist on making its own nest in its 

 own place, building it in the time-honoured way, and 

 guarding and maintaining it as its very own. Pheasants 

 and partridges are the worst offenders against this 

 ideal in this country and at the present time. It is 

 comparatively common to find a pheasant and a 

 partridge laying their eggs in the same nest, or a 

 French and English partridge taking this bad reading 

 of the entente cordiale. The subsequent history of 

 such experiments varies. More often the two birds 

 sit side by side, each hatching half the combined 

 clutch. Sometimes the birds fight for the nest, and 

 one of them is driven away, not only from the other's 

 eggs but from its own also. 



