MARCH CUCKOOS 



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accurate data have been preserved and published. 

 Several well-known naturalists have kept records of 

 this kind for twenty, thirty, and forty years, and in 

 one instance, where members of a Norfolk family 

 continued the observations commenced by a pre- 

 decessor, a journal was carefully kept for more than 



THE CUCKOO. 



a century. It is to records such as these that one 

 naturally turns for accurate information as to the 

 arrival of migratory birds, especially when there is 

 reason to doubt the truth of a report which announces 

 the appearance of some particular species many 

 weeks before the usual date of its arrival. 



To take the case of the Cuckoo. Scarcely a 

 year elapses in which we do not read in the daily 



