and Nests of the Cuckoo, 401 



touch them. As I had labourers constantly at work in that 

 field, I went thither every day, and always looked if the bird 

 was there ; but did not disturb it for seven or eight days, 

 when I was tempted to drive it from the nest, and found two 

 young ones, that appeared to have been hatched for some 

 days, but there was no appearance of the third egg. I then 

 mentioned this extraordinary circumstance (for such I thought 

 it) to Mr. and Mrs. Holyoak of Bidford Grange, Warwick- 

 shire, and to Miss M. Willes, who were on a visit at my 

 house, and who all went to see it. Very lately I reminded 

 Mr. Holyoak of it, who told me he had a perfect recollection 

 of the whole ; and that, considering it a curiosity, he walked 

 to look at it several times, was perfectly satisfied as to its being 

 a cuckoo, and thought her more attentive to her young than 

 any other bird he ever observed, having always found her 

 brooding her young. In about a week after I first saw the 

 young ones one of them was missing, and I rather suspected 

 my ploughboys had taken it, though it might possibly have 

 been taken by a hawk, some time when the old one was seek- 

 ing food. I never found her off her nest but once, and that 

 was the last time I saw the remaining young one, when it was 

 almost full feathered. I then went from home for two or three 

 days, and when I returned the young one was gone, which, 

 I take for granted, had flown. Though, during this time, I 

 frequently saw cuckoos in the thicket I mention, I never saw 

 the cock bird paired with this hen." * 



Now, I cannot but think that the following remarks of Dr. 

 Jenner leave no doubt that the nest observed by Mr. Wilmot, 

 as well as that seen by Mr. Stafford, belonged not to the 

 cuckoo, but the night-jar : — " With due deference," says Jen- 

 ner, " to Dr. Darwin, I am inclined to think that the opinion 

 he set forth respecting the training of cuckoos was taken up 

 hastily ; and that the birds which his friend saw feeding their 

 nestlings were not cuckoos but goatsuckers, whose mode of 

 nestling corresponds with the relation given, and whose ap- 

 pearance might be mistaken for them by one not perfectly 

 conversant with the plumage and the general appearance of 

 cuckoos when on the wing." f 



The assertion of Aristotle, that the cuckoo sometimes builds 

 among broken rocks and on high mountains J, and a similar 

 remark quoted from Niphus by Gesner §, are no more to be 

 trusted than his story of the redbreast being annually changed {| 



* Darwin's Zoonomia, i. 246., 3d edit. 8vo. 



j- Jenner in Philosophical Transactions for 1824, p. 42. 



4: Aristotle, Hist. Anim. vi. 1. 



§ Gesner, Ade vibus, iii. || Pliny, ^Elian, Salerne, &c. 



