Wonderful Structural Adaptation. ij 



sion and the fanciful anatomy by his remark on the 

 previous page of his wondrous tale of ejectment, that 

 the young cuckoo ' makes a lodgment for the burden 

 by elevating its elbows.' " * 



Now, did Dr. Charles Creighton himself make the 

 series of dissections here desiderated, and is he, on 

 the ground of that, ready to say that Montagu, 

 Yarrell and Bishop Stanley, Mrs. Blackburn and her 

 circle, Mr. John Hancock and his friends, and Mr. 

 R. Kearton, are not only unworthy of credence for 

 solemnly-given evidence, some of which will be im- 

 mediately presented, but that, in short, they are all 

 conscious and determined liars ? An answer will 

 oblige. 



Other instances of wonderful structural adaptation 

 in young birds, certainly not more essential to their 

 preservation than is this in the young cuckoo, on the 

 theory of its often itself getting rid of the legitimate 

 birds, are to be found in many cases, and some of 

 them shall be cited at once. 



The late Mr. John Hancock, a well-known North- 

 umbrian ornithologist, reported observations almost 

 entirely to the same effect as those of Mrs. Blackburn. 

 In this case the nest was that of an accentor or hedge- 

 sparrow. 



He wrote ; — ^" It is quite certain that the young are 

 ejected very soon after they are hatched ; of this I 

 have conclusive proof. On the 6th June, 1864, I 

 observed a nest of the Hedge-Accentor, which con- 



* Mr. Howard Saunders says that this cavity on its back Jills 

 up after the twelfth day. Manual of Birds, p. 278. Does Mr. 

 Saunders here speak from observation and experience and dis- 

 section, or does he merely repeat the dogma of Jenner ? 



