258 The Cuckoo. 



perfectly, and still open to discussion. It is the common opi- 

 nion of naturalists, that the cuckoo deposits an egg in the nest 

 of some small bird, and that the egg is hatched, and the young 

 bird reared, by its foster-parent. There are some, however, 

 who doubt this generally received opinion. Among these may 

 be instanced Mr. Mudie, a very accurate observer of nature, 

 who has advanced some things quite at variance with the com- 

 mon theory. He says': " We have never met with the egg of 

 a cuckoo along with that of any other bird, have, never scared 

 a little bird from the act of incubation in a cuckoo's nest, and 

 never have detected one little bird in the act of feeding a cuc- 

 koo, either in the nest or out of it." 



Though I can no more boast of any of these discoveries than 

 Mr. Mudie, I still see no reason to doubt the received opinions, 

 since so many profess to have scared small birds from the act of 

 incubation on cuckoo's eogrs along with their own. I have some 

 recollection of having, when a boy, once seen a little bird feed- 

 ing a cuckoo, which my companions called goxvk and a titling. 

 Why the bird is called gowk in Scotland does not appear to 

 be connected with the meaning of that word, which \sJbol, but 

 from the Scottish mode of imitating the first syllable of the bird's 

 cry, gowkoo. In most languages, it has a name expressive of 

 its peculiar cry. 



Again, Mr. Mudie says : " There is another circumstance, 

 which gives at least a colour of probability to the fact, that the 

 cuckoo does not use the nests until they have answered the ori- 

 ginal purpose of the builders, and that is, that the hatching 

 time of the titling, whether that titling be the common pipit, as 

 is most common in the north and east of the island, or the hedge- 

 sparrow (Accentor modularis), which is said to be the foster- 

 bird of the cuckoo in the south of England, is earlier than that 

 of the cuckoo." If cuckoos were reared in hedge-sparrows' 

 nests, and their nests never found after the usual time of build- 

 ing, by the first ones being destroyed, there would be much 

 plausibility in Mr. Mudie's opinion, for in general their brood 

 is hatched before the cuckoo arives in this country. But I never 

 knew an instance of cuckoo's eggs being found in hedge-sparrows' 

 nests; it is in the nests of wagtails, whinchats, and titlarks that 

 we may expect to find an egg, and sometimes, though very rarely, 

 two, a little larger than the rest. It does not appear to have 

 been ascertained by what rule the cuckoo proceeds to palm her 

 eggs upon small birds ; that is, whether she lays one egg in 

 each of several nests, or whether the two eggs sometimes found 

 are deposited by the same bird. 



I am aware that other naturalists, and, I believe, Mr. Selby, 

 mention the hedge-sparrow as the foster-bird of the cuckoo. But 

 it is worthy of attention, that the nests of all the birds referred 



