Common Cuckoo. 281 



but by means of oological correspondents in various parts of 

 Germany collected a large series of facts bearing upon the matter 

 which were convincing to his own mind : convictions which seem 

 to have been shared in by many of the leading ornithologists of 

 Germany. I will not weary the patience of my readers by taking 

 them through the several instances which Dr. Baldamus details > 

 but pass on at once to the results he arrived at, merely remark- 

 ing, by the way, that he followed up his investigations with such 

 earnest zeal, that when he wrote his paper he had before him no 

 less than one hundred Cuckoos' eggs, special care being taken to 

 ascertain accurately from the nest of what particular species 

 every one of these eggs was taken. 



The first thing which Dr. Baldamus established to his own 

 satisfaction, by means of these repeated observations, was, that 

 the Cuckoo lays its eggs in the nests of no less than thirty-seven 

 species, including not only every species of Chat, Warbler, 

 Wagtail, Pipit, and Lark, but even exceptionally certain of the 

 grain-eating Finches and Buntings : these exceptions being 

 doubtless in cases only where the Cuckoo was deprived, by some 

 accident, of the nest she had selected for her egg, and which, 

 when ready to be laid, she was obliged to consign to the care of 

 the best nurse she could find at short notice. To this seeming 

 inconsistency on the part of the parent bird I may however add, 

 that grain- eating species have been known to bring up young 

 Cuckoos ; and the explanation is, that even the hard-billed 

 birds are accustomed to feed their young, at any rate at first, 

 with insects. 



From the thirty-seven species alluded to above, which have been 

 ascertained to act as foster parents of the young Cuckoo, Dr. 

 Baldamus enumerates no less than twenty-eight, to whose several 

 eggs he affirms the egg of the Cuckoo will bear some similarity in 

 colouring ; and this he then proceeds to prove from the specimens 

 lying before him, and which (as I before remarked) are all care- 

 fully authenticated, in regard to the nests from which they were 

 taken. All these specimens he examines singly, and describes 

 their colouring, as nearly all partaking, in a greater or less degree, 



