104 CUCKOO. 



an egg, or a young bird, when the young Cuckoo is employed 

 in removing either of them from the nest. When it is about 

 twelve days old, this cavity is quite filled up; and then the 

 back assumes the shape of nestling birds in general.' 



The young Cuckoo is for the most part hatched before the 

 eggs of its foster-parent, if any have been left to be incubated; 

 and in the latter case it loses no time in asserting its 

 usurped rights, but generally on the very day it is hatched, 

 its might takes the place of right, and one by one the 

 true-born birds are thrown out, to be killed by the fall, or 

 by any other mishap that may befall them. If it should 

 happen that one or more of the little birds should be, by 

 some means or other, preserved in the nest, their parent 

 feeds them and the interloper with the like attention; making 

 it to appear that she cannot discriminate between them. 

 'Tros Tyriusve' share equally her maternal care; and this even 

 after leaving the nest, both on the ground and in trees. A 

 Robin has been known so devoted in its attention that it 

 came to feed out of a person's hand to obtain sufficient food 

 for its adopted child. One instance is mentioned in the 

 'Zoologist,' page 1637, by Mr. J. W. Slater, of Manchester, 

 as having been witnessed by Mr. Beech, of Droylsden, in 

 which the young birds of a Meadow Pipit having been found 

 on the ground outside the nest in which was a young 

 Cuckoo, and having been replaced to see what would happen, 

 the parent birds, on their return, 'immediately threw out 

 their own offspring, to make room for the parasite.' They 

 do the same with their own eggs if replaced. 



As before hinted, the adult Cuckoo occasionally herself 

 destroys, by throwing out, one or more of the eggs of the 

 bird into whose nest she surreptitiously introduces her own. 

 But how does she introduce them? Here again is another 

 singularity! It is perfectly certain that in some instances 

 she conveys them in her bill into the other birds' nests it 

 lias been already mentioned that one was shot with her egg 

 actually in her bill Spurzheim says he has seen one carrying 

 it in her feet. Mr. Williamson, the curator of the Scarbor- 

 ough Museum, found the egg of one in a nest which was 

 placed so close under a hedge, that the Cuckoo could not 

 possibly have got into it! and T. Wolley, Esq. records another 

 similar instance, communicated to him by Mr. Bartlett, of 

 Little Russell Street, London, in which he found one in the 

 nest of a Robin, which was placed in so small a hole that 



