178 THE BIRDS OF IONA AND MULL. 



Norman recipes for cottage cookery, especially that of making 

 savoury meat of Sea Crows. I have a mind to send a pair of 

 Phalacracorax to the Times office, with a recipe of how to make 

 hare soup without first catching your hare. 1 



I have a book on birds, published in 1805, intelligently written, 

 though quaint enough according to our notions, which mentions 

 some instances of the Cuckoo rearing its own young, which I think 

 I ought to transcribe, as a good correspondent, like a good house- 

 holder, should bring forth things old and new, in case of their 

 being turned to possible account. " The Cuckoo in some parts 

 of England hatches and educates her young, whilst in other parts 

 she builds no nest, but uses that of some other bird. Dr Darwin 

 thus writes : 2 ' As the Eev. Mr Stafford was walking in Glosson 

 Dale, in the Peak of Derbyshire, he saw a Cuckoo rise from its 

 nest. The nest was on the stump of a tree, among some chips 

 that were in part turned grey, so as much to resemble the colour 

 of the bird. In this nest were two young Cuckoos ; tying a 

 string about the leg of one of them, he pegged the other end 

 of the string to the ground, and very frequently for many days 

 beheld the old Cuckoo feeding these young ones.' Dr Darwin 

 thus continues from the Eev. Mr Wilmot, of Morley : ' In the 

 beginning of July 1*792, I was attending some labourers on my 

 farm, when one of them said to me, " There is a bird's nest on 

 one of the coal-slack hills ; the bird is now sitting, and is exactly 



1 Professor Darwin mentions in The Naturalist's Voyage to have read that the 

 islanders of the North of Scotland bury the rank carcases of fish-eating birds to 

 render them eatable. C. W. G. [The Editor has partaken of scart soup, and can 

 fully endorse the above remarks.] 



2 Zoonomia, Section XVI. 13, 5, "On Instinct," Vol. I. p. 244, octavo. 



