The Higher Sentiments of Birds. 327 
at last discovered the cuckoo, which was found on the 
ground dead but not eaten. The robins came to the 
spot afterwards—not with food, but as if they missed 
their charge. 
The easy explanation of a blind instinct is not 
satisfactory to me. On the other hand, the doctrine 
of heredity hardly explains the facts, because how few 
birds’ ancestors can have had experience in cuckoo- 
rearing? There is no analogy with the cases of goats 
and other animals suckling strange species ; because 
in those instances there is the motive—at all events 
in the beginning —of relief from the painful pressure 
of the milk. But the robins had no such interested 
motive: all their interests were to get rid of their 
visitor. May we not suppose, then, that what was 
begun through the operation of hereditary instinct, z.e., 
the feeding of the cuckoo, while still small and before 
the young robins had been ejected, was continued 
from an affection that gradually grew up for the help- 
less intruder? Higher sentiments than those usually 
attributed to the birds and beasts of the field may, I 
think, be traced in some of their actions. 
To the number of those birds whose call is more 
or less apparently ventriloquial the partridge may be 
added ; for when they are assembling in the evening 
at the roosting-place their calls in the stubble often 
sound some way to the right or left of the real posi- 
tion of the bird, which presently appears emerging 
from the turnips ten or fifteen yards farther up than 
