THE ^PYOHNIS. 469 



far distant, and gives the alarm by his notes, when any person is 

 approaching. The female sits so close, that you may almost 

 reach her with your hand, and then precipitates herself to the 

 ground, feigning lameness, fluttering, trailing her wings, and 

 tumbling over, in the manner of the partridge, woodcock, and 

 many other species. Both parents unite in providing food for 

 the young." 



In this narrative, two points are especially worthy of notic& 

 In the first place, the egg of the Cow-bird is proportionate in 

 size to the bird which laid it. Kow, one of the most remarkable 

 facts connected with the history of the common cuckoo is, that 

 although the bird is as large as a small hawk, its egg is scarcely 

 half as large as that of a thrush or blackbird, as indeed is 

 needful for its admission into the nest of a hedge-sparrow or 

 redstart. 



Here, then, we have an example of a bird laying an egg which 

 is extremdy small in proportion to its own size, while in the 

 apteryx or kiwi-kiwi of New Zealand, we have an example of 

 a bird laying an egg which is absolutely gigantic in proportion 

 to its own size. The apteiyx is not a large bird, certainly not 

 larger than a guinea fowl, and yet its egg looks like that of a 

 swan, and weighs just one quarter as much as the bird which 

 produced it. Thus it is evident that the dimensions of an egg 

 afford no certain criterion respecting the size of the bird that laid 

 it, and although a large bird usually lays a large egg, and a 

 small bird lays a little one, the caaes may be reversed, as in the 

 instance just mentioned. 



All naturalists are familiar with the gigantic egg laid by some 

 bird unknown, and called by the provisional name of .MpyanvU, 

 or " tall-bird." This egg makes that of the ostrich itself shrink 

 into insignificance, for its lineal measurement is precisely double 

 that of a large ostrich egg, and its cubic bulk is eight times as 

 great. In fact, the sepyomis egg looks as gigantic by the side 

 of an ostrich egg, as does an ostrich egg near that of a duck. It 

 was therefore imagined that the aepyomis must be at least eight 

 times as large as the ostrich, and a height of sixteen feet was 

 attributed to the unknown bird. 



Now, it is easy to work out this problem by the rule of three, 

 and to give the result in figures ; but when that result is com- 

 pared with existing facts, it becomes startling. On paper, a 



