3726 The Zoologist — October, 1873. 



regard to all species of birds. T mean that the hedge accentor 

 will feed its young with one kind of food, the robin with another, 

 and the wagtail with a third, and so on throughout the list of 

 foster-parents to which the cuckoo entrusts her progeny. If this 

 be conceded, and if it be considered possible that diet may affect 

 the colouring matter of the eggs, we are advanced some way on the 

 road towards allowing the plausibility of my fancy. 



But I would now observe that if any hen bird of any species 

 arrived at maturity be dissected and examined, it will be found that 

 her ovary will contain the germs of all the eggs she will ever lay 

 during her life-time. It is not impossible, then, that if influenced 

 at all by the nutriment on which she was brought up, she may be 

 permanently influenced, in regard to the colouring of all the eggs 

 she will lay. Not to mention that it is far from unlikely that a 

 cuckoo, hatched by a hedgesparrow or wagtail, might ever after 

 affect the diet to which it was first accustomed, just as an Eton 

 Colleger returns in afterlife with extreme relish to the roast mutton 

 which formed his daily dinner at school. 



It is true that in this theory I have no precedent or even 

 analogy in the feathered race to guide me, for how can one expect 

 a precedent in aught that pertains to so exceptional a species as 

 the cuckoo ? but still I have some sort of corroborative evidence to 

 adduce from the insect world. I allude to the case of bees ; and 

 it is now an acknowledged fact that in the event of any accidental 

 destruction or unexpected loss of the queen bee (when provision 

 had not been made for her successor, after the usual custom, by 

 rearing princesses in the cells specially prepared for the royal 

 brood) the nurses will adopt the grub of an ordinary worker, and 

 by feeding it with a special diet, reserved on other occasions for 

 the royal cells alone, will from that worker grub develope a queen, 

 differing in size and colpur as well as vocation from the individual 

 it would under ordinary circumstances have become.* Such a 

 permanent effect in this case has a particular diet on the uncon- 

 scious and passive infant. 



I repeat that the theory I have been discussing is but a fancy, 

 but possibly it may be worth examination. When first it occurred 

 to me 1 made an effort to get it corroborated, or overthrown, by 

 laying it before one whose authority in such matters is of European 

 reputation, and who would have carried conviction in its favour, or 

 » See Bevan on the Honey Bee, p. 21. 



