THE CUCKOO IN THE PIPIT'S NEST. 



inches from the nest. They were put back, being still alive, and then 

 ensued the events which are related in the right-hand column : 



Jen?ier's account, 'Phil. Trans.,' 1788, 

 p. 225. 



" ' The mode of accomplishing this 

 was curious : the little animal, with 

 the assistance of its rump and wings, 

 contrived to get the bird upon its 

 back, and making a lodgment for the 

 burden by elevating its elbows, clam- 

 bered backward with it up the side 

 of the nest till it reached the top, 

 where, resting for a moment, it threw 

 off its load with a jerk, and quite dis- 

 engaged it from the nest. 



"'It remained in this situation a 

 short time, feeling about with the 

 extremities of its wing, as if to be 

 convinced whether the business were 

 properly executed, and then dropped 

 into the nest again.' 



Mrs Blackburn's account, ( Nature,' 

 vol. v., p. 382. 



" ' The newly hatched Cuckoo strug- 

 gled about till it got its back under 

 one of them, when it climbed back- 

 wards directly up the open side of 

 the nest, and pitched the Pipit from 

 its back on to the edge. It then 

 stood quite upright on its legs, which 

 were straddled wide apart, with the 

 claws firmly fixed half-way down the 

 inside of the nest, among the inter- 

 lacing fibres of which the nest was 

 woven, and, stretching its wings apart 

 and backwards, it elbowed the Pipit 

 fairly over the margin. 



'"After this the Cuckoo stood a 

 minute or two, feeling back with its 

 wings as if to make sure that the 

 Pipit was fairly overboard, and then 

 subsided into the bottom of the nest. 



" ' All this, I find, accords accurately 

 with Jenner's description.' 



" Dr Norman Moore, in his Life of Jenner in the Dictionary of National 

 Biography, has called attention to the fact that the well-known naturalist 

 Waterton, the author of Wanderings in South America and Essays on 

 Natural History (both edited by Dr Moore, with an excellent biography of 

 the author), had rejected Jenner's narrative as incredible. 'The young 

 Cuckoo,' wrote Waterton, ' cannot by any means support its own weight 

 during the first day of its existence. Of course, then, it is utterly incapable 

 of clambering rump foremost up the steep side of a Hedge Sparrow's nest, 

 with the additional weight of a young Hedge Sparrow on its back. The 

 account carries its own condemnation, no matter by whom related or by 



109 



