1110 The Zoologist— March, 1808. 



It is not until after an interval of several clays that the cuckoo lays 

 another egg in the same manner, and then deposits it in another nest 

 which she has previously selected; and so on till her whole comple- 

 ment of four or five or six eggs is laid;* but never on any occasion 

 does she lay two eggs in the same nest; so that, although it is true 

 two cuckoo's eggs have been sometimes found in the same nest, these 

 were without doubt from different parent birds, and by no means the 

 eggs of the same individual. f 



But now if the egg of the cuckoo was at all proportioned to the size 

 of the bird, it would not only at once attract the attention and alarm 

 of the foster-parent, but it would be impossible for so diminutive a 

 nurse to brood over and hatch it; and therefore Nature, who never 

 does anything by halves, but provides for every emergency, has giveu 

 a strange disproportion in the egg of the bird to the size of the parent 

 cuckoo (the egg of the cuckoo being no larger than that of the lark, J 

 though the relative size of the two birds is as four to one) — a dispro- 

 portion, however, the necessity for which is most apparent, if the little 

 foster-parent is to be duped into believing the egg of the intruder to 

 be her own. 



The cuckoo, then, having laid her eggs of comparatively diminutive 

 size, and entrusted each to the charge of carefully selected foster- 

 parents, is by many supposed to leave them to their fate, and to take 

 no farther interest in the matter. § But this does not seem to be the 

 case.|| On the contrary (and for this I have the high authority of Dr. 

 Gray of the British Museum), the cuckoo has been observed to frequent, 

 the neighbourhood, and watch near the nest during the whole period 

 of incubation ; and then, when the eggs are hatched, it is the parent 

 cuckoo,1f and not the young one (as Dr. Jenner supposed,** and so 

 led many into error) which generally removes from the nest the young 



* Colonel Montagu dissected a cuckoo which hid in her four or five eggs. 

 (Omilb. Diet.). Mr. Rennie thinks it lays a second lime. Blumenbach says she 

 lays six eggs in the spring/rom time to time. Jessie's 'Gleanings in Natural History,' 

 p. 125. 'Naturalist' for 1851, p. 162. 



t ' Zoologist,' 8823, 9325. Yarrell's ' British Birds,' vol. ii. p. 192. Montagu's 

 'Ornithological Dictionary,' Introduction, p. ix. 



X Yarrell in loco, vol. ii. p. 191. Bewick, vol. i. p. 108. 



§ ' Zoologist,' 1638. 



|| ' Ibis,' vol. iv. p. 384. Wood's ' Illustrated Natural History,' vol. ii. p. 572. 



V ' Zoologist,' 2589, 2603, 4895, 6676, 8166, 8195, 8235, 8681. Jesse's 'Glean- 

 mgs in Natural History,' p. 123. 



** ' Philosophical Transactions,' vol. lxxviii. 



