Book Pews and Meviews 
Metsops or Arrractinc Brrps. By 
Gipert H. Trarron. Houghton, 
Mifflin & Co. t2mo., xvi 171 pages, 
39 illustrations. Price, $1.25. 
From a great variety of sources, includ- 
ing his own experience, Mr. Trafton has 
here brought together much practical 
information in regard to bird-houses, 
feeding-stands, planting, and other means 
of attracting birds, and adds a chapter on 
bird protection in schools, which his work 
as a teacher makes of especial value. The 
books will answer the frequently asked 
question as to how to bring birds about 
our homes in summer, as well as in winter, 
and it should therefore exercise a wide 
influence in protecting birds and strength- 
ening our friendship with them.—F. M. C. 
Lirz AND BEHAVIOR OF THE Cuckoo. By 
Franeris H. Herrick, Journ. of Ex- 
perimental Zodlogy, IX, 1910, pp. 109- 
233; plates, 7. 
We very earnestly commend this paper, 
which we cannot review at the length 
adequate treatment of it demands, to 
every student of birds in nature. After 
a review of the known facts concerning 
the nesting habits of the European Cuckoo 
(Cuculus canorus), Professor Herrick adds 
an elaborate study of the home-life of our 
Black-billed Cuckoo (pp. 193-232), and 
reaches the following conclusions: 
“+. Cuckoos do not display more intel- 
ligence than many other species of birds, 
the extraordinary acts which many of 
them perform being sufficiently accounted 
for by the possession of modified and 
highly specialized instincts. 
“9, The origin of the parasitism in many 
of the Old-World Cuckoos and American 
Cowbirds is to be sought in the disturbance 
of the cyclical instincts, to which it has 
been shown that these families of birds 
are especially subject, and, in particular, 
in the attunement of egg-laying to nest- 
building. Sporadic cases of this sort occur 
in all birds, when they either drop their 
eggs on the ground and eventually abandon 
- them, or lay in other birds’ nests, when 
they will sometimes fight for possession. 
We may assume that through the action 
of inheritance and selection the practice 
has become established more or less com- 
pletely in the present parasitic species; 
but while we can indicate the steps of the 
process, the causes which have led to each, 
in succession, can only be surmised. 
“3. American Black- and Yellow-bill 
Cuckoos show a tendency to produce eggs 
at irregular intervals of one to two or three 
days, which accounts for the presence of 
eges and young in their nest for a longer 
time than is usual; but here the com- 
parison ends. Any disadvantage which 
might arise from such a condition has been 
completely allayed by an early division 
of the young, each one of which (in the 
Black-bill) leaves the nest in succession 
on the seventh day from birth, and spends 
about two weeks in a climbing stage pre- 
paratory for flight. Special powers and 
instincts have arisen in the young in adap- 
tation to this condition. 
“4. The evicting instinct of certain Old 
World Cuckoos has apparently arisen as 
a response to a contact stimulus of a dis- 
agreeable kind, which would be more 
irritating in a living and moving nestling 
than in a dead one. It is transitory, 
beginning to rise on the first to third days, 
and to wane in the tenth to the fourteenth. 
“e. The American Black-billed Cuckoo 
is born with rudimentary down, which 
never unfolds. It has strong grasping 
reflexes, and is remarkably enduring. 
It can hold by one leg or toe for a sur- 
prising length of time, and draw itself up 
to the perch with one or both feet, at birth 
or shortly after,—powers which no other 
birds in this part of the world are known 
to display, and which must be regarded as 
preparatory to the climbing stage soon to 
follow. 5 
“6. On the sixth day, the complete quill 
stage is reached, when the bird bristles 
(249) 
