ORDER SCANSORES. ,521 



hatch, or young to rear, so they have no need of mutual affec- 

 tion, or common care for their progeny. 



The female, according to the naturalist just quoted, can 

 only lay an egg or two at most, because the superflux of 

 nutriment being almost entirely absorbed by the growth of 

 the plumage, can furnish but little to the reproduction of the 

 species. This assertion, however, appears to rest on very 

 slight foundation — in the first place, there is nothing less 

 proved, than that these birds re-appear in Spring, with 

 plumage scarcely renewed, that their wings are so feeble that 

 they can seldom ascend large trees, but are forced to drag 

 themselves along from bush to bush ; this privation of the 

 power of raising themselves on a tree, and this unfinished 

 state of their plumage on their arrival in this country, would 

 indicate a bird in the moulting state, and the cuckow must 

 on this principle be supposed to moult anew in spring, for it 

 cannot be imagined that the state of the plumage, thus de- 

 scribed, can be the remains of the autumnal moulting ; but 

 the absurdity of this supposition is manifest, for how is it 

 possible that birds which arrive from Africa, half-deplumed, 

 and with wings so weak that they cannot raise themselves to 

 the moderate height of a tree, should have been able to per- 

 form so long a voyage as they must have undertaken to 

 come and pass the summer in the north of Europe ? The 

 naturalist who advanced the assertion on which we are com- 

 menting, has not thought proper to enter into any explanation 

 of this phenomenon. It is true enough, that in the early days 

 of their arrival, the ouckows frequent bushes, and are often 

 observed to fix themselves on the ground ; but this is not in 

 consequence of the weakness of their wings, for at this season 

 they make very considerable flights : it proceeds from their 

 seeking in the plants then in vegetation, and on the young 

 shrubs which begin to be covered with verdure, for the 

 insects which they cannot find on large trees, which are still 



