278 Cuculidce. 



nutive size, and entrusted each to the charge of carefully selected 

 foster-parents, is by many supposed to leave them to their fate, 

 and to take no further interest in the matter.* But this does not 

 seem to be the case.f On the contrary (and for this I have the 

 high authority of Dr. Gray, of the British Museum), the Cuckoo 

 has been observed to frequent the neighbourhood, and watch near 

 the nest during the whole period of incubation ; and then when 

 the eggs are hatched, whether it is the parent Cuckoo,} as 

 Mr. Waterton stoutly maintained, or whether it is the young one, 

 as Dr. Jenner || and others as positively declared, which removes 

 from the nest the young Cuckoo's foster-brethren and any un- 

 hatched eggs there may be, is a question still warmly disputed. 



Whether or no there are any other offices which the parent 

 Cuckoo undertakes for its young, I will not venture to affirm ; 

 though it is the opinion of some experienced naturalists that she 

 really feels an anxiety for them not less than that shown by 

 other birds :1T while others maintain that she has occasionally, 

 though very exceptionally, been known to feed her own young, of 

 which several convincing proofs have been adduced ;** and others 

 again declare that she sometimes even takes the young under her 

 protection, when they are sufficiently fledged to leave the nest.-f~f- 

 But be that as it may, towards the end of July the old birds are 

 preparing to migrate, and the male has already changed his note 

 to that stammering repetition of the first syllable which (as all 

 observers know) heralds the cessation of his so-called song; and 

 which an old writer, John Hay ward, who flourished about A.D. 

 1580, has described in the following quaint but very graphic 

 rhymes : 



c Zoologist, p. 1638. 



t Ibis, vol. iv., p. 384. Wood's ' Illustrated Natural History,' vol. ii., p. 572. 



j Zoologist, 2589, 2603, 4895, 6676, 8166, 8195, 8235, 8681. Jesse's ' Glean- 

 ings in Natural History,' p. 123. 



' Essays on Natural History,' first series, p. 228. 



|| * Philosophical Transactions,' vol. Ixxviii. 



If Wood's ' Illustrated Natural History, 1 vol. ii., p. 572. Naturalist for 

 1851, pp. 67, 162. 



** Naturalist for 1851, p. 11. 



tt Yarrell's ' British Birds,' vol. ii., p. 197. Naturalist for 1851, p. 233. 



