228 FIELD AND HEDGEROW. 



nest they could be put, else, perhaps, they would be. 

 There is no night-feeding bird to feed the fern owl's 

 young. Does any one think the cuckoo could herself 

 feed two young cuckoos? How many birds would it 

 take to feed three young cuckoos ? Supposing there were 

 five young cuckoos in the nest, would it not take almost 

 all the birds in a hedge to feed them ? For the in- 

 credible voracity of the young cuckoo — swallow, swallow, 

 swallow, and gape, gape, gape — cannot be computed. 

 The two robins or the pair of hedge-sparrows in whose 

 nest the young cuckoo is bred, work the day through, 

 and cannot satisfy him ; and the mother cuckoo is said 

 to come and assist in feeding him at times. How, 

 then, could the cuckoo feed two or three of its 

 offspring and itself at the same time? Several 

 other birds do not build nests — the plover, the fern owl. 

 That is no evidence of lack of intelligence. The 

 cuckoo's difficulty, or one of its difficulties, seems to be 

 in the providing sufficient food for its ravenous young. 

 A half-fledged cuckoo is already a large bird, and needs 

 a bulk of soft food for its support. Three of them 

 would wear out their mother completely, especially if — 

 as may possibly be the case — the male cuckoo will not 

 help in feeding. This is the simplest explanation, I 

 think ; yet, as I have often said before, we must not 

 always judge the ways of birds or animals or insects 

 either by strict utility, or by crediting them with semi- 

 supernatural intelligence. They have their fancies, likes 

 and dislikes, and caprices. There are circumstances — 

 perhaps far back in the life-history of their race — of 

 which we know nothing, but which may influence their 

 conduct unconsciously still, just as the crusades have 

 transmitted a mark to our minds to-day. Even though 

 an explanation may satisfy us, it is by no means certain 



