NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 97 



may it not be owing to the dams being engaged in incubation, while 

 the young are concealed by the leaves 1 



Many times have I had the curiosity to open the stomachs of wood- 

 cocks and snipes ; but nothing ever occurred that helped to explain to 

 me what their subsistence might be : all that I could ever find was a 

 soft mucus, among which lay many pellucid small gravels. 



I am, &c. 



LETTEE IY. 



TO THE SAME. 



SELBORNE, Feb. I9th, 1770. 



DEAR SIR, Your observation that " the cuckoo does not deposit its 

 egg indiscriminately in the nest of the first bird that comes in its way, 

 but probably looks out a nurse in some degree congenerous, with whom 

 to intrust its young," is perfectly new to me ; and struck me so forcibly, 

 that I naturally fell into a train of thought that led me to consider 

 whether the fact was so, and what reason there was for it. When I 

 came to recollect and inquire, I could not find that any cuckoo had ever 

 been seen in these parts, ex- 

 cept in the nest of the. wag- 

 tail, the hedge-sparrow, the 

 titlark, the white-throat, and 

 the redbreast, all soft-billed 

 insectivorous birds. The ex- 

 cellent Mr. Willughby men- 

 tions the nest of the Palumbus 

 (ring-dove), and of the frin- 

 gilla (chaffinch), birds that 

 subsist on acorns and grains, 

 and such hard food : but 

 then he does not mention 

 them as of his own know- 

 ledge ; but says afterwards 



that he saw himself a wagtail CUCKOO. 



feeding a cuckoo. It appears 



hardly possible that a soft-billed bird should subsist on the same food with 

 the hard-billed : for the former have thin membranaceous stomachs suited 

 to their soft food ; while the latter, the granivorous tribe, have strong 

 muscular gizzards, which, like mills, grind, by the help of small gravels 

 and pebbles, what is swallowed. This proceeding of the cuckoo, 

 of dropping its eggs as it were by chance, is such a monstrous outrage 

 on maternal affection, one of the first great dictates of nature ; and such 

 a violence on instinct ; that, had it only been related of a bird in the 

 Brazils, or Peru, it would never have merited our belief. But yet, 

 should it farther appear that this simple bird, when divested of that 

 natural arropy^ that seems to raise the kind in general above them- 

 selves, and inspire them with extraordinary degrees of cunning and 

 address, may be still endued with a more enlarged faculty of discerning 



H 



