THE CUCKOO'S MATE 219 



nest with her own egg therein, half incubated or 

 fresh, and at last adopted the easiest way of all to 

 put her egg there without bother when the owner 

 was out, and leave the rest to a fooled maternal 

 instinct. 



It is not likely that all the facts, anatomical and 

 otherwise, were considered before the instinct of the 

 country-side christened the wryneck " cuckoo's mate." 

 The fact of its arrival punctually a few days before 

 the cuckoo, and possibly the not very remote resem- 

 blance of its call to that of a cuckoo, made it the herald 

 of the bird of summer. On the other hand, it is pos- 

 sible that a cumulative instinctive knowledge of some 

 of its habits and peculiarities made men grope to its 

 name on the same extended grounds that have bidden 

 systematists put it on equality with the yaffle in a 

 sub-family of the Pictdce, or woodpeckers, and in the 

 same order as the Cucultdce, or cuckoos. The yaffle, 

 or green woodpecker, has many of the wryneck's 

 distinctive habits in a less degree. He can turn his 

 neck with almost the same snake-like suppleness, and 

 can hiss as effectively as the " snake-bird." But the 

 wryneck is specially got up for the earning of its name, 

 having an exaggerated eye-stripe that accentuates the 

 apparent contortion of the neck. A well-accredited 

 writer indeed declares that the wryneck can twist 

 its neck so far " as to allow the head to make a 

 complete revolution on its axis." That, however, is 

 not the fact. Even torquilla, the twister, has its 

 limitation. In compensation we will strongly insist 

 that its family name of lyinx, the shrieker, is a cruel 

 misnomer. There is not a gentler, mellower, happier 

 cry in the whole gamut of an April day than the seven- 



