ORDER SCANSORES. 519 



this pretended carnivorous bird is, that when it is left to 

 itself it will never touch it, and it is necessary to thrust it 

 into the bill to make the bird swallow it ; but if insects are 

 put into its cage, it will readily take and swallow them of its 

 own accord. This is not the mode in which a genuine bird 

 of prey would act. In fine, if the circumstance of a bird''s 

 eating meat in a prepared or half masticated state, in default 

 of other food, is to be taken as a proof of its carnivorous 

 character, all our singing insectivorous birds must be ranked 

 as birds of prey as well as the cuckow. 



It has been an universally vulgar error that the cuckow 

 is nothing but a small hawk metamorphosed, and that this 

 metamorphosis takes place twice a year, at the same periods, 

 namely, in the month of July, when it ceases to sing, and 

 in the spring, when it is again turned into a cuckow. This 

 absurdity is founded on the circumstance that these two 

 birds are seldom or ever seen together in the same places. 

 When the cuckow begins to sing, the hawk returns into 

 the depth of the forest, and does not reappear in the 

 neighbourhood of inhabited places until the former bird 

 ceases to be heard. Also, there is a very great resemblance 

 in their plumage, size, mode of flight, solitary life, &c. ; 

 added to which, the colours of the female cuckow are very 

 analogous to those of the merlin. But the cuckow has 

 neither the tarsus, the beak, the toes, the claws, the courage, 

 nor the strength of a bird of prey. 



Many other absurdities have been recounted of the cuckow : 

 such as that it returns in spring on the shoulders of the kite — 

 that it casts a saliva on plants, which is fatal to them, by the 

 larvae which it engenders, and that these again prove fatal to 

 the bird by stinging it imder the wing. The fact is, that 

 this pretended saliva of the cuckow is nothing but the frothy 

 exsudation of a species of cigala. It is also reported, that 

 the female cuckow takes the precaution of laying an egg of 

 the same colour as those in the nest where she deposits it, 



