1108 The Zoologist— March, 18C8. 



bound, too, in honesty to add, that the well-known cry of the cuckoo 

 has been declared by some naturalists (though I think erroneously) to 

 be common to holh sexes.* Lastly, I will repeat that the female has 

 that strange peculiarity of depositing her eggs singly in the nests of 

 other species, which she selects as suitable foster-parents lo her own 

 young, — a peculiarity not shared in by any others of our British birds, 

 though by no means unknown among the feathered tribes of other 

 countries, the cowbird, for example, of America,t which belongs to the 

 starling tibe, several species of the African cuckoos and others. His 

 from this last eccentricity of conduct that so many strange and 

 unlooked for habits of the cuckoo take their rise : let us examine them 

 one by one; but fust let me earnestly protest against the unmeaning 

 outcry and charge of unnatural, unfeeling conduct often preferred 

 against the cuckoo, X as if she did not follow out the instincts of her 

 nature as truly as every other bird, and as if there was not some good 

 and sufficient reason (though we may be unable to fathom it) why 

 some species delegate the care of their young to other birds: rather, I 

 think, should we admire the wonderful instinct which leads them to 

 select, as foster-parents, those species only whose feeding is similar to 

 their own, and so would provide their young with suitable nourishment; 

 and that dexterity which enables them to insert their eggs amongst 

 others, just at the right moment when the foster-parent is preparing 

 to sit. § 



Now, first I beg to state without hesitation that never, by any 

 possibility, does our British cuckoo either build a nest of her own, or 

 incubate her eggs on the ground. We hear constant tales of such 

 occurrences : every year our periodicals and newspapers contain state- 

 ments of such marvellous incidents, which would be marvellous indeed 

 if true ; but 1 venture to assert most positively, without fear of contra- 

 diction, that all such stories have originated from some error; and 

 either the common nightjar, || of nearly the same size, fluttering away 

 from her marbled eggs at the root of an old oak, or some other bird, 

 has been mistaken for the cuckoo, which never, iu any single instance, 

 has been known to sit on her own eggs. 



* ' Magazine Nat. Hist.' vol. uii. pp. 329— .382. 'Naturalist' for 1851, pp. 11, 172. 

 f Wilson's ' American Ornithology,' vol. ii. p. 162. 

 J Bishop Stanley's ' Familiar History of Birds,' vol. ii. p. 80. 

 § Gilbert White's ' Natural History of Sellicrne,' letter iv. ' 

 || Montagu's ' Supplement to Ornithological Dictionary,' vol. ii. Rennie's ' Arthi- 

 tecture of Birds,' p. 380. Gilbert White's 'Sclborne,' letter »ii. 



