Common Cuckoo. 277 



German naturalist who recorded the event. But I believe this to 

 be her invariable method, whether the small nest of the foster- 

 parent be accessible to her or no : and then again, this habit of - 

 taking the egg in her beak, and so depositing it in the chosen nest, 

 considered in conjunction with the similarity of her egg to that of 

 several species of small birds as detailed farther on, will readily 

 account for the frequent assertion on the part of eye-witnesses of 

 the Cuckoo eating the eggs of small birds, which they trium- 

 phantly declare they have themselves seen between the mandibles 

 of that bird's beak.* 



It is not until after an interval of several days that the Cuckoo 

 lays another egg in the same manner and then deposits it in another 

 nest which she has previously selected ; and so on till her whole 

 complement of four or five or six eggs is laid.-|- But never on any 

 occasion does she lay two eggs in the same nest ; so that 

 although it is true that two Cuckoo's eggs have been sometimes 

 found in the same nest, these were without doubt from different 

 parent birds, and by no means the eggs of the same individual^ 



But now if the egg of the Cuckoo was at all proportioned to the 

 size of the bird, it would not only at once attract the attention 

 and alarm of the foster-parent, but it would be impossible for so 

 diminutive a nurse to brood over and hatch it ; and therefore 

 Nature, who never does anything by halves, but provides for every 

 emergency, has given a strange disproportion in the egg of the 

 bird to the size of the parent Cuckoo (the egg of the Cuckoo 

 being no larger than that of the Lark, though the relative size 

 of the two birds is as four to one) a disproportion, however, the 

 necessity for which is most apparent, if the little foster-parent is 

 to be duped into believing the egg of the intruder to be her own. 



The Cuckoo then, having laid her eggs of comparatively dimi- 



Naturalist for 1851, p. 162 ; for 1852, p. 33. 



f Colonel Montagu dissected a Cuckoo which had in her four or five eggs 

 ( { Ornith. Diet.'). Mr. Rennie thinks it lays a second time. Blumenbach says 

 she lays six eggs in the spring from time to time. [Jesse's ' Gleanings in 

 Natural History,' p. 125.] Naturalist for 1851, p. 162. 



+ Zoologist, 8823, 9325. YarreU's ' British Birds,' vol. ii., p. 192. Mon- 

 tagu's ' Ornith. Diet.,' Introduction, p. ix. 



Yarrell in loco, vol. ii., p. 191. Bewick, vol. i., p. 108 



