The Zoologist— March, 1868. 1111 



cuckoo's foster brethren, and any unbatched eggs there may be, — a 

 fact which my friend, the late lamented naturalist, Mr. Waterton, 

 proved* to be quite impossible for any uewly-hatched bird, however 

 precocious that bird might be. 



Whether or no this is the last office which the parent cuckoo under- 

 takes for its young, I will not venture to affirm : though it is the 

 opinion of some experienced naturalists that she really feels an 

 anxiety for her young not less than that shown by other birds ;f while 

 others maintain that she has occasionally, though very exceptionally, 

 been known to feed her own young, of which several most convincing 

 proofs have been adduced ; % and others again declare that she some- 

 times even takes the young under her protection, when they are 

 sufficiently fledged to leave the nest.§ But be that as it may, towards 

 the end of July the old birds are preparing to migrate, and the male 

 has already changed his note to that stammering repetition of the first 

 syllable which (as all observers know) heralds the cessation of his so- 

 called song, and which an old writer, John Hayward, who flourished 

 about a. d. 1580, has described in the following quaint but very 

 graphic rhymes. 



" Iu April the cuckoo can sing her song by rote. 

 Iu June ofi'times she cannot sing a note. 

 At first, koo ; koo ; koo; sings till can she do 

 At last, kooke, kooke, kooke ; six kookes to one koo." 



By the beginning of August, then, the parent cuckoos are gone south- 

 wards, but the young cuckoo is notoriously a tedious nursling, and 

 indeed, having to grow from the inmate of a very small eggshell to a 

 bird of considerable dimensions, requires time for such development, 

 and taxes, to a very large extent, the powers as well as the assiduity of 

 its foster-parents : by degrees this overgrown infant not only fills the 

 little nest which was never meant for such a monster, but is forced to 

 vacate it, and sits perched on the edge, while the foster-parents, unable 

 to reach up to it from below, alight on its back in order to feed it.|| 



* ' Essays in Natural History,' first series, p. 228. 



f Wood's 'Illustrated Natural History,' vol. ii. p. 572. 'Naturalist' for 1851, 

 p. 67, 162. 



% 'Naturalist' for 1851, p. 11. 



§ Yarrell, vol. ii. p. p. 572. ' Naturalist ' for 1 851 , p. 233. 



|| 'Gardener's Chronicle,' 1851, p. 469. 'Mag. Nat. Hist.' vol. ix. p. 638, 

 'Naturalist,' 1851, p. 132, 1852, p. 33. 



