136 SPRING. 



destroyed. They are voracious eaters ; and when any 

 noise is made near the nest, especially when the dull 

 harsh chatter of the female is imitated, they gape most 

 lustily for food, raising their feathers at the same time, 

 and nibbling at any substance; but eating and not 

 fighting is obviously their cue ; and if they get abun- 

 dance of caterpillers and soft worms, we do not think 

 that they would heed though there were a whole aviary 

 in the nest. 



We must again say, that we do not deny the hatch- 

 ing of cuckoos by small birds, or the depositing of its 

 eggs, one by one, in the nests of as many different 

 birds as there are eggs, without any reference to the 

 species. We do not absolutely deny the story re- 

 peated upon hearsay by Vieillot, that the female cuckoo 

 swallows her own egg, or at least carries it in the 

 gullet, in order that she may place it through her bill 

 in the small-domed nest of the wren. Denying, with- 

 out proof in natural histor/, is just as bad as asserting 

 without proof; and were it not that we are familiar 

 with the whole history of the barnacle (lepas anatifercey 

 and the barnacle goose (anas (eucopsis), from the germ 

 and the egg to the full grown animal, we would not 



deny that 



i{ Barnacles turn solan geese, 

 I' the islands of the Orcades ;" 



though we would say that, like what is alleged of the 

 cuckoo, it were very unlike the usual mode of na- 

 ture's proceeding. Incubation is so much a law of 

 the nature of birds, that instead of deserting their own 

 eggs, the females show considerable dispositions to sit 

 upon the nests of others ; as we have observed in snpr. 



