and Nests of the Cuckoo. ~ 399 
as well as those on the rump, are unusually long, dashed 
with cinereous, and slightly tipped with white.” * 
The young cuckoo, on account of the reddish ireuge 
plumage just described, has by some distinguished naturalists 
been ranked as a separate species, under the name of the 
red cuckoo (Cuculus rufus ‘Brisson, C. hepaticus Lath. Ind.). 
‘There can be no doubt, however, but that, from recent inves- 
tigations, this supposed red, or hepatic, cuckoo is not distinct 
from the common species. + 
The variety of the colouring in the cuckoo has, likewise, 
more than once caused it to be mistaken for several other 
birds, such as different kinds of hawks, for the wood pigeon, 
and for a merlin (Falco A’salon Temminck)§, so that Mr. 
Masters is by no means alone in the affair. Nay, I have 
Just met with a passage in White’s Se/borne which furnishes 
a circumstance exactly parallel. 
‘** A countryman told me,” says White, “he had found a 
young fern owl in the nest of a small bird on the ground, and 
that. it was fed by the little bird. I went to see this extra- 
ordinary phenomenon, and found that it was a young cuckoo, 
hatched in the nest of a titlark; it was become vastly too 
big for its nest, appearing 
* ¢in tenui re 
Majores pennas nido extendisse ;’” || 
and was very fierce and pugnacious, pursuing my finger as I 
teased it for many feet from the nest, and sparring and buf- 
feting with its wings like a game-cock. The dupe of a dam 
appeared at a distance, hovering about with meat in its mouth, 
and expressing the greatest solicitude.” + 
I think, after these circumstances being justly weighed, 
that the night-jar ought to be exculpated from the charge be 
being a parasite, though it certainly does not take the trouble 
of constructing any sort of nest, but lays its two eggs (the 
cuckoo lays six) on the bare ground, among heath, furze; or 
long grass, and usually near a wood, sometimes at the foot of 
trees, or in the holes of their trunks: 
J. RENNIE. 
Lee, Kent, May 22. 
* Supplement to Ornith. Dict., art. Cuckoo. 
+ See Mag. of Nat. Hist., vol. i. p. 249, 250. 
t M. Heérissaut in Mém. de l’ Acad. des Sciences, 1752, p. 417. 
§ Salerne, Hist. des Oiseaux, p. 40. 
ie Lo have stretched its wings beyond the little nest.’ 
+ Nat. Hist. of Selborne, i. 225., ed. London, 1825. 
DD 4 
