THE ANIMAL KINGDOM. 263 



this bird selects for the accomplishment of its designs, and 

 it only deposits one egg in it. 



Here a curious problem presents itself. The nests of 

 these charming visitors of our groves are too narrow to ad- 

 mit of a bird so large as the cuckoo either entering one, or 

 resting upon it in order to lay ; how, then, did it manage 

 to introduce its progeny ? Levaillant quite despaired of 

 being able to penetrate this mystery, when chance furnished 

 him with an opportunity of doing so. The celebrated trav- 

 eller, having killed a female golden cuckoo in Africa, found 

 in its gullet an unbroken egg, which he recognized as that of 

 the bird itself, and his negro assured him that, frequently, 

 when killing these cuckoos on the wing, he had seen the 

 eggs fall from their mouths. 



A modest savant, M. Florent Prevost, to whom we owe 

 extensive and interesting observations, has discovered that 

 the same thing takes place with respect to our common 

 cuckoo. He has noticed that the female lays her egg on 

 the ground, and then takes it in her beak, places it in her 

 gullet, and deposits it in the nest of the insectivorous spe- 

 cies of which she makes choice. 



Pliny relates at length that when the young cuckoo is 

 in the midst of the little family of the titmouse the latter, 

 seeing it so strong and handsome, sacrifices, from a senti- 

 ment of maternal vanity, all her other little ones to it, and 

 allows it to devour them before her eyes, falling herself a 

 prey to it in the end. 



Such is the fiction. Let us abandon it for the reality, 

 which is no less extraordinary, and which was revealed to 

 us by a man of deathless fame, Jenner, the discoverer of 

 vaccination. 



