

CUCKOW. 393 



worth attention, though some men of high scientific rank 

 have asserted that such is the case. It is enough to remark 

 that none of them have been sufficiently accustomed to out- 

 door observation to inspire confidence in their own experience, 

 or to be competent judges of that of others. Most of them 

 relied on statements, made no doubt in good faith, but made 

 without the accurate practice so necessary for a field-natural- 

 ist.* An old Cuckow may very likely in the pursuit of her 

 business be now and then seen near a nest containing a 

 young Cuckow ; but that the latter was her own offspring, or 

 that she was intentionally visiting it, are assumptions which 

 cannot be allowed without stronger evidence than has been 

 in most cases adduced. 



The egg of the Cuckow of which more must be said 

 presently having been successfully placed in the nest of 

 her dupe,t it will be convenient to describe the subsequent 



* Stories of this kind seem to have been first put forth in England in 1772 by 

 Barrington (Phil. Trans. Ixii. p. 299, note) whose example was unfortunately 

 followed by Erasmus Darwin (Zoonomia, ed. 1794, i. pp. 172, 173, and ed. 

 1796, i. pp. 175-177) and Fleming (Brit. Aniin. pp. 90, 91). In 1823, and 

 again about five years later, Mr. Blackwall (Mem. Lit. Philos. Soc. Manchester, 

 ser. 2, iv. pp. 464, 465, and Zool. Journ. iv. pp. 297-300), reversing the 

 experience of White (in his seventh letter to Barrington), gave what is no 

 doubt the correct explanation of the more prominent cases reported by those 

 authors, namely that the birds seen were Nightjars. But notwithstanding 

 this, John Edward Gray subsequently revived the belief by relating, it is said 

 (Proc. Zool. Soc. 1836, p. 104), "a series of facts," to the effect that the hen 

 Cuckow sometimes takes care of her young, feeds it after leaving the nest in 

 which it was hatched, and teaches it to fly. The details of this naturalist's 

 observations, which were "made by himself," as stated by Mr. Gould, in 

 1836 or 1837, (B. Eur. pt. xix.), seem never to have been published, and 

 the only other information about them is that given by Blyth who said 

 (Analyst, ix. pp. 67, 68) that Gray "affirms that he has himself seen a 

 Cuckoo, day after day, visit the spot where one of its offspring was being reared, 

 and which it finally enticed away from its foster-parents." There is therefore no 

 means of accounting for the mistake, but that a mistake was made scarcely any 

 one can doubt. In 1859 even, a celebrated ornithologist tried to persuade the 

 Editor and some of his friends that the naked breast and belly of a Cuckow 

 was full proof of the bird having been brooding. The nudity of these parts, 

 figured by Prof. Schlegel, in 1831, in illustration of his often-quoted and little- 

 read prize-essay (Natuurk. Verhandel. Haarlem, xix. pp. 237-268, fig. 1), is 

 characteristic of both sexes of the Cuckow, and the example in question proved 

 on dissection to be a male ! 



t Of the birds included in this work the egg of the Cuckow is recorded as 



