1156 The Zoologist— April, 18C8. 



Post Office, was not very observable from the others in regard to its 

 ground colour, even when it was faded [" selbst wenn es verbleicht 

 war"], so that one would point it out from its striking dissimi- 

 larity. 



Moreover, we should lay the less stress upon such a dissimilarity, 

 as the grain-eating warblers are only in very rare cases chosen as the 

 foster-parents of the cuckoo, which is appointed to eat animal food. 

 Herr Olph. Galliard indeed maintains that the cuckoo, at least in his 

 locality (the environs of Lyon), has a preference for the nest of the 

 common bunting [" grauammer"], and has himself taken several young 

 cuckoos which had been brought up in the nests of these birds: and 

 Herr Bethe (S. Naum. iii. 1, p. 105) found in the stomach of one 

 taken out of a linnet's nest quite green unripe seeds (Panicurus san- 

 guinale and others). But even on the supposition that buntings and 

 finches [" ammern und finken"] do not feed their young ones entirely 

 with vegetables, the fact last mentioned shows that the bringing up of 

 a bird which is appointed exclusively for animal food, by those which 

 only, or at any rate partly, feed on vegetables, must belong to the ex- 

 ceptions ; and it is a question whether the cuckoo which had been 

 taken out of the linnet's nest by Herr Bethe would not have died if 

 the linnets had continued to feed it with the seeds.* 



For that reason it would be quite extraordinary if the cuckoo's eggs 

 should resemble the eggs of these exceptional foster-parents. 



The fact is quite established, and beyond all doubt, that there are 

 cuckoo's eyys which, both in colour and in markings, are very like the 

 eggs of those warblers in whose nests they are accustomed to be laid. 



What follows then from this ? 



If Nature has any motive in this, and she never trifles, there is, in 

 unison with the high dignity of the laws of Nature and the Creator, 

 a conclusion very apparent: she has so planned her arrangements as 

 to facilitate the continuance of the species under the conditions once 

 appointed. This seems more sound than the assumption that she had 

 a desire to show that warblers (which generally recognise so easily all 

 strange eggs, casting them out of the nest, or else deserting it), in 

 regard to the cuckoo's eggs, are quite blind, and cannot recognise 



* There certainly remains still the possibility that instinct may lead the foster- 

 parents, out of the order of corn-eating warblers, to continue lo bring insects again 

 and again to the young foster-bird, which showed sijjns of hunger, and yet declined 

 seeds of various kinds. It would indeed be extremely interesting if the stomach of a 

 cuckoo like this of Heir Bethe should come into the hands of a Johann Mailer. 



