604 BIRDS. 



immediately conveyed to the spot, and placed under the cuckoo. 

 On the 9th day after the eggs had been in this situation, the per- 

 son appointed to superintend the nest, as it was some distance 

 from the place of my residence, came to inform me, that the 

 wagtails were hatched. On going to the place, and examining the 

 nest, I found nothing in it but the cuckoo and the shells of the 

 wagtail's eggs. The fact therefore of the birds being hatched, I do 

 not give as coming immediately under my own eye ; but the testi- 

 mony of the person appointed to watch the nest was corroborated 

 by that of another witness. 



To what cause then may we attribute the singularities of the 

 cuckoo ? May they not be owing to the following circumstances ? 

 The short residence this bird is allowed to make in this country, 

 where it is destined to propagate its species, and the call that 

 nature has on it, during that short residence, to produce a numer- 

 ous progeny. The cuckoo's first appearance here is about the 

 middle of April, commonly on the 17th. Its egg is not ready for 

 incubation till some weeks after its arrival, seldom before the 

 middle of May. A fortnight is taken up by the sitting bird in 

 hatching the egg. The young bird generally continues three weeks 

 in the nest before it flies, and the foster-parents feed it more than 

 five weeks after this period ; so that, if a cuckoo should be ready 

 with an egg much sooner than the time pointed out, not a single 

 nestling, even one of the earliest, would be fit to provide for itself 

 before its parent would be instinctively directed to seek a new 

 residence, and be thus compelled to abandon its young one; for 

 old cuckoos take their final leave of this country the first week 

 in July. 



Had nature allowed the cuckoo to have staid here as long as 

 some other migrating birds, which produce a single set of young 

 ones, as the swift or nightingale for example, and had allowed her 

 to have reared as large a number as any bird is capable of bringing up 

 at one time, these might not have been sufficient to have answered 

 her purpose; but by sending the cuckoo from one nest to another, 

 she is reduced to the same state as the bird whose nest we daily 

 rob of an egg, in which case the stimulus for incubation is sus- 

 pended. Of this we have a familiar example in the common do- 

 mestic fowl. That the cuckoo actually lays a great number of 

 eggs, dissection seems to prove very decisively. 



Among the many peculiarities of the young cuckoo, there is one 



