88 BIEDS 



social, even on migration. And what an ill-conditioned 

 lout is the youngster, with the true manners of a new-rich 

 profiteer and a greed which might do credit to an old 

 Koman decadent ! The cuckoo, in fact, is a parasitic 

 degenerate, in whom the maternal passion, so strong 

 among birds, has become corrupted and practically dis- 

 used, and the general cause of the lapse from avian grace 

 is surely an inferiority of character which failed to meet 

 the high responsibilities of nurture demanded of the 

 feathered tribes. The very sight of the bird gives it 

 away; it is somehow out of health, out of tune. It has 

 the appearance of a spiritless, lackadaisical hawk ; it looks 

 the part it plays that of a trickster which has exploited 

 the devotion of its fellow-birds but at the expense of a 

 harmony, vitality, and intense response to life which they, 

 its victims, possess. Quite apart, then, from the actual 

 evidence that the cuckoo constantly blunders in foisting 

 its offspring upon other people's doorsteps and planting 

 eggs upon them which frequently do differ in colour and 

 markings from the legitimate ones in the nest, I submit 

 that degeneracy implies not an accentuation but a blunt- 

 ing of mental faculty and that there is no ground at all 

 for crediting this sluggish, mean-spirited bird with an 

 abnormal foresight and cunning. The cuckoo only cares 

 just enough for the future of its offspring to deposit the 

 egg in security. And is it not possible that she will one 

 day go a step too far in indifference and leave her egg 

 upon the ground? That, at any rate, is what the South 

 American parasitic cow-bird (Molothrus bonariensis) does 

 and survives only because it lays an enormous number 

 (physiological irregularity again) and deposits about half 

 of them in the nests of other species. Unquestionably, 

 the cuckoo's parasitism is an ugly phenomenon in nature, 

 to my mind the ugliest of all, since its egoism preys upon 

 the altruism of others and leaves them defenceless against 

 it (as they are not against the bird of prey) through the 

 dynamic power of the maternal feelings. But it should be 



