5020 _ Tue Zootocist—Avevust, 1876. 
Eleven young cuckoos have been known to proceed one after the 
other from a single nest, and there is some interest in this fact, as 
it probably furnishes a clew to the number of eggs deposited in 
one season by parasitic cuckoos in the nests of other birds. It 
seems to be the rule that most birds bring off two families in the 
year; and if our common cuckoo, for instance, built its own nest 
it would lay from four to five eggs each time, so that we may 
consider that each female cuckoo entrusts eight or nine eggs to 
other birds to attend to. From being extra noisy before wet 
weather, the American cuckoos are commonly called “rain-birds.” 
“Although not parasites, like the European species, devoid of 
parental instinct, they have their bad traits, being even worse 
enemies of various small, gentle birds, for they are abandoned 
thieves, as wicked as jays in this respect, continually robbing 
birds of their eggs, and even, it is said, devouring the helpless 
nestlings.” 
One of the most eccentric birds in the North-American list is a 
species of starling, the cowbird (Molothrus pecoris), which, like 
our cuckoo, is parasitic, laying its eggs in the nests of other birds, 
chiefly flycatchers and thrushes. Some mystery still clings to the 
progress of the foster-child thrust in this manner upon many 
victimised birds; for it has been found that in whatever nest it 
may be placed the egg of the cowbird is hatched before any of 
the eggs which are the lawful occupants, and that directly the 
young cowbird appears all these are wont to vanish, in whatever 
stage of incubation they may have been. It is supposed that all 
the time and care of the parent birds being taken up in providing 
for their suppositious offspring they themselves carry away their 
eggs, as now only encumbering the nest. Dr. Coues looks upon 
the cowbird as “an advanced thinker,” so entirely does it dispense 
with all family ties. But how was this strange instinct first 
originated in the cowbird and various cuckoos? The Doctor 
accounts for it on a Darwinian hypothesis :— 
« Ages ago, it might be surmised, a female cowbird, in imminent danger 
of delivery without a nest prepared, was loth to loose her offspring, and 
deposited her burden in an alien nest, perhaps of her own species, rather 
than on the ground. The convenience of this process may have struck her, 
and induced her to repeat the easy experiment. The foundlings duly 
hatched, throve, and came to maturity, stamped with their mother’s indi- 
vidual traits—an impress deep and lasting enough to similarly affect them 
