THE BOOK OF MIGRATORY BIRDS 



even the very little birds are readie to war with them ; for 

 feare, therefore, that the whole race be utterly destroyed 

 by the furie of others of the same kind, they make no nest 

 of their owne (being otherwise timorous and feareful natur- 

 ally of themselves), and so are forced by this craftie shift 

 to avoid the danger. The titling (Anthus pratensis) there- 

 fore that sitteth, being thus deceived, hatcheth the egge, 

 and bringeth up the chick of another bird. And this young 

 cuckoo, being greedy by kind, beguiling the other young 

 birds and intercepting the nest from them, groweth thereby 

 fat and fair-liking, whereby it comes into special grace and 

 favour with the dam of the rest and nurse to it. She 

 joyeth to see so goodly a bird toward, and wonders at 

 herselfe that she hath hatched and reared so trim a chick. 

 The rest, which are her owne, indeed, she sets no store by, 

 as if they were changelings, but in regard of that one 

 counteth them all misbegotten, yea, and suffereth them to 

 be eaten and devoured of the other even before her face; 

 and this she doth so long, until the young cuckoo, being 

 once fledged and readie to flie abroad, is so bold as to seize 

 on the old titling and to eat her up." 



Linnaeus, the German, repeats this story of the voracious 

 appetite, and hence the strange, but to the Germans 

 appropriate expression, "ungrateful as a cuckoo.'* It 

 appears, however, physically impossible that the young 

 cuckoo, whose bill is only adapted for providing a meal 

 of soft caterpillars, could ever perpetrate this horrible 

 crime, and it is suggested that a conglomeration of 

 observations of other foreign birds' habits have given rise 

 to this particular trait in this fledgeling. That the egg of 

 the cuckoo is carried in its beak to the selected nest is 

 indisputable, for the shooting of the bird in transit to a 

 nest has revealed this fact, the egg having been invariably 

 found not far from the dead bird. Speaking of its in- 

 satiable appetite, the writer, when a youth, endeavoured 

 to rear a young cuckoo, and attended to if for some time, 

 and such was its appetite that it never seemed to have 

 enough. Yet it did not make any attempt to eat unless it 



