i6 Life History of Common Cuckoo. 



yet opened, and its neck seemed too weak to support 

 the weight of its head. . . . The most singular thing 

 of all was the direct purpose with which the blind 

 little monster made for the open side of the nest, the 

 only part where it could throw its burden down the 

 bank. I think all the spectators felt the sort of 

 horror and awe at the apparent inadequacy of the 

 creature's intelligence to its acts that one might have 

 feh at seeing a toothless hag raise a ghost by an in- 

 cantation. It was horribly uncanny and gruesome ! " 



Dr. Charles Creighton, in his Vaccination and 

 Jenner and elsewhere, has dealt with statements 

 about the cuckoo's habits, and the peculiar points 

 of structure in the young cuckoo, in a spirit of 

 thorough scepticism to say the least. Here is one 

 passage : 



" The young cuckoo's back, it seems, is especially 

 designed for the lodgment and ejectment of eggs and 

 young birds, for, different from other newly-hatched 

 birds, its back from the scapula downwards is very 

 broad, with a considerable depression in the middle. 

 This depression seems formed by nature for the de- 

 sign of giving a more secure lodgment to the egg of 

 the hedge-sparrow or its young one when the young 

 cuckoo is employed in removing either of them from 

 the nest. When it is about twelve days old, this 

 cavity is quite filled up and then the back assumes 

 the shape of nesting birds in general. This unique 

 and marvellous structural change, it need hardly be 

 said, has no existence ; nor did Jenner seek to estab- 

 lish this assertion in the only way in which it could 

 be established, by a series of dissections. Moreover, 

 he himself inadvertently supplies the key to the illu- 



