THE WREN, THE HEDGE SPARROW, AND THE ROBIN. 343 



have swung long ago, on account of his well-known depredations 

 amongst these birds, had it not been that he is a universal favourite 

 with the household, and particularly caressed by the ladies for his 

 engaging manners. It is supposed, and with too much reason, that 

 he murdered two fine cock pheasants only a week ago. Indeed, I 

 had no doubt in my own mind but that he was the real culprit, 

 although a stranger cat was taken up at the time and hanged for the 

 offence. My conscience rebuked me for partiality on that occasion ; 

 and I felt that I had done wrong. But it was only an affair with a 

 cat; and I trust that the public will overlook it, when we reflect 

 that, only the other day in Dublin, a high dignitary of the law did 

 exhibit such palpable partiality in a cause of " Victoria versus 

 Repeal," that he ought to have been unwigged there and then, and 

 banished for ever from that arena of marked injustice to poor ould 

 Ireland and her patriot sons. 



We are still in uncertainty, and probably must ever remain so, 

 concerning the story of the newly hatched cuckoo in the nest of the 

 hedge sparrow. It is an undisputed fact in natural history that the 

 cuckoo, like some of our own species, has a clever knack at freeing 

 itself from the duty of providing for its own offspring. This bird is 

 notoriously partial to the homestead of the hedge sparrow ; and thus 

 many a poor hedge sparrow is saddled with the care and expense of 

 rearing the young of an alien, whose manners and customs are totally 

 different from those of her own tribe. We learn from the story in 

 question, that a young cuckoo, the day -after it was hatched, con- 

 trived to get a young hedge sparrow (which was in the same nest 

 with itself) on its back, and proceeded with it, stern foremost, up the 

 side of the nest; and, on arriving at the summit, jerked its load into 

 the hedge below. The performance of such a feat is impossible. 

 At that period of existence, the legs of the young cuckoo could not 

 support the weight of its own body, to say nothing of the additional 

 load of another upon that body. Again, the supposed act was quite 

 contrary to any instinct with which the young cuckoo might have 

 been endowed ; for, had not the old bird been frightened away, she 

 would have been sitting on the two young ones at the time in 

 which the feat was said to have taken place; and her covering 

 them would have totally prevented such a movement on the part 



