(308 BIRDS. 



ground in the manner that a hen partridge does when disturbed 

 from a new hatched brood, and went only to a thicket about forty 

 or fifty yards from the nest ; and continued there as long as I 

 staid to observe her, which was not many minutes. In the nest, 

 which was barely a hole scratched out of the coal slack in the man- 

 ner of a plover's nest, I observed three eggs, but did not touch 

 them. As I had labourers constantly at work in that field, I went 

 thither every day, and always looked to see if the bird was there, 

 but did not disturb her for seven or eight days, when I -was tempt- 

 ed to drive her from the nest, and found two young ones, that 

 appeared to have been hatched some days, but there was no 

 appearance of the third egg. I then mentioned this extraordinary 

 circumstance (for such I thought it) to Mr. and Mrs. Holyoak of 

 Bidford Grange, Warwickshire, and to Miss M. Willes, who were 

 on a visit at my house, and who all went to see it. Very lately 

 I reminded Mr. Holyoak of it, who told me he had a perfect recol- 

 lection of the whole, and that, considering it a curiosity, he 

 walked to look at it several times, was perfectly satisfied as to its 

 being a cuckoo, and thought her more attentive to her young, 

 than any other bird he ever observed, having always found her 

 brooding her young. In about a week after I first saw the young 

 ones, one of them was missing, and I rather suspected my plough- 

 boys having taken it ; though it might possibly have been taken 

 by a hawk, sometime when the old one was seeking food. I never 

 found her off her nest but once, and that was the last time I saw 

 the remaining young one, when it was almost full feathered. I then 

 went from home for two or three days, and when I returned, the 

 young one was gone, which I take for granted had flown. Though 

 during this time I frequently saw cuckoos in the thicket 1 mention, 

 I never observed any one, that I supposed to be the cock-bird, 

 paired with this hen." 



Nor is this a new observation, though, it is entirely overlooked 

 by the modern naturalists, for Aristotle speaking of the cuckoo, 

 asserts that she sometimes builds her nest among broken rocks, 

 and on high mountains, but adds in another place that she gene- 

 rally possessed the nest of another bird ; and Niphus says that 

 cuckoos rarely build for themselves, most frequently laying their 

 eggs in the nests of other birds. 



[Zoonomia, Sect, xvi. xiii, 5. 



