188 AFFINITIES AND GEOGRAPHICAL 



are many varieties of the Lark, adapted to life upon shores, 

 in fields, and amongst the woods. They possess a remarkably 

 strong conical beak for husking seeds, and which they occa- 

 sionally employ even in breaking nuts for the sake of the 

 kernels. Perhaps with the larks should be associated the 

 pipits or titlings. The Buntings (JSmbcrizicte), comprising 

 the yellow hammer, ortolan, &c., are a comparatively un- 

 tuneful variation from the larks, having a shorter bill with a 

 palatal knob, but generally similar habits, insomuch that they 

 are often caught in the same net. From them again come 

 the Sparrows (Passeres), so widely diffused and so well 

 known as also the Finches (FritogiSUdci), the latter an ex- 

 tensive genus of field birds, comprehending the goldfinch, 

 chaffinch, linnet, canary, cross-bill, &c. The most con- 

 spicuous external feature of this series of birds is a hind 

 claw of unusual length and straightness. All are conirostral. 

 The Cuckoo is from many features entitled to a place in or 

 about this portion of the corvine stirps, though its zygodactyle 

 foot has caused it to be classed by naturalists in their purely 

 artificial order of scansores or climbers. It is prevalent over 

 the old world, including Australia, and is everywhere noted 

 for its habit of placing its eggs in the nests of other birds, 

 that its young may be hatched and brought up by them. As 

 is well known, the rearing of a young cuckoo in a nest costs 

 the life of all the foster mother's own progeny. Here we 

 have another difficulty of a remarkable kind for those who 

 maintain that each species has been the result of a special fiat, 

 for how irreconcileable is it with all our ideas of immediate or 

 special arrangement that a particular species can only be con- 

 tinued by such a sacrifice. The fact is, that the cuckoo is 

 obliged by its constitutional character to stay an unusually 

 short time in the northern regions where it produces its 

 young. In our country its normal stay is only from the 

 middle of April to the beginning of July. Belated in its ap- 

 proach to the nursing regions, it is obliged to make use 

 of the nests of other birds, which it finds ready built. What 

 is worthy of notice, it employs the nests of its own nearest 

 relations, the larks, pipits, finches, sparrows, &c., an arrange- 



