398 Parasite Habits of the Night-jar, 
ground, and carries it to the nest made choice off in her biil * ; 
as our own cuckoo must do, beyond a doubt, when it deposits 
its egg in the nest of the wren, the chifehatt (Sylvia hippo- 
lais), or the redstart (S. Phoenicirus), as the narrow entrance 
of these nests precludes any other mode of introducing it. 
Mr. Masters, as above, asserts the same of the night-jar; but 
I have not the slightest doubt that the bird in question was 
not a night-jar but a cuckoo, for which it may readily be mis- 
taken, even by naturalists of considerable experience, as a 
young cuckoo is so unlike the full-grown bird that it has led 
to many mistakes. Block +, as well as Sanders {, and Sepp §, 
who is usually accurate in the most minute particular, have 
even mistaken the egg, and figured the large oval white 
marbled with brown egg of the night-jar for that of the 
cuckoo, which is always small, rounded, and greenish, yel- 
lowish, bluish, or greyish whites and always blotched, not 
marbled, with olive or ash colour, being about the size of a 
house-sparrow’s, and very like it in colour, while the night- 
ju’s egg is larger than a blackbird’s. || The young of the 
night-jar does not differ from the full-grown bird; but the 
cuckoo does not attain its mature plumage till the third year ; 
and, instead of the greyish lead blue of the old birds, is brown, 
with numerous spots and cross-streaks of a reddish rust co- 
lour, very similar to the markings of the night-jar. The two 
birds, when full-grown, are also precisely of the same size, 
namely, 10} in. in length.| The similarity, then, I think, is 
tolerably complete. 
“As the young of the cuckoo,” says Colonel Montague, 
‘differs so materially in the first year’s plumage from the 
adult, it may not be improper to give a description for the 
information of those who may wish to know the distinction. 
“The irides are greyish; the whole upper part of the 
plumage is a mixture of dusky black and ferruginous in 
transverse bars, except the forehead, and a patch on the 
back of the head, which (in this specimen) is white; and the 
tips of the scapulars are pale; the feathers of the whole under 
parts are sullied white, with distant transverse bars of dusky 
black. In general each feather possesses two or three bars : 
the sides of the neck and _ breast tinged with rufous: the 
lateral feathers of the tail, and the inner webs of the quills, 
more or less barred with white ; the coverts of the tail, which, 
* Wilson’s Amer. Ornithology, ii. 46. 
+ Besc. der Berlin, Gess. iv. tab. 18. fig. 1 { Naturf. xiv. s. 49. 
§ Sepp, Nederl. Vogel, ii. 117. II ae Gen. Hist. of Birds, i ili, 261, 
+ Temminck, Manuel, p. 382—437, 
