CUCKOO PUZZLES 45 
naturalists have confirmed, that the blind. and 
naked young cuckoo manages to get its body under- 
neath an egg or a nestling, and by moving con- 
vulsively backwards, ousts it from the nest. It is a 
prodigious effort for a puny infant, and is followed 
by great exhaustion. After a rest, however, the 
eviction may be repeated if necessary. A short 
time ago the French ornithologist Raspail, in a 
paper read before the Zoological Society of France, 
gave expression once again to the skepticism which 
“Jenner’s legend” has often aroused. Pouncing 
upon some faked photographs of the alleged evic- 
tion, Raspail upbraided naturalists with their 
credulity, and maintained that for six days after 
hatching it is a physical impossibility for the young 
cuckoo to push anything whatever outside the nest. 
What happens, according to Raspail, is that the 
mother cuckoo keeps an eye on the child which she 
has put out to nurse, and makes room for it in the 
nest by picking out the eggs or the young birds. It 
is admitted that a cuckoo in depositing its egg in 
a nest may occasionally puncture, or swallow, or 
remove one or more of the others; but, circum- 
stantial as Raspail’s picture is, we adhere to what 
Newton said twenty years ago: ‘Of the assertion 
that the cuckoo herself takes any interest in the 
future welfare of the egg she has foisted on her 
victim, or of its product, there is no evidence worth 
a moment’s attention.” It may sometimes happen 
that the foster-parents remove a broken egg or a 
nestling which the young cuckoo has mechanically 
