22 hife History of Common Cuckoo. 



had not had a successful opportunity of watching the 

 whole process as carefully as I was able to do on 

 that occasion. 



" Since these observations were made, my atten- 

 tion has been called to the following quotation from 

 Mr. Henry Seebohm 's^wiorc of British Birds, (vol. 

 ii, p. 383) : — ' It has been said, on what appears to be 

 incontestable evidence, that the young cuckoo, soon 

 after it is hatched, ejects the young or eggs from the 

 nest by hoisting them on its back ; but one feels in- 

 clined to class these narratives with the equally well 

 authenticated stories of ghosts and other apparitions 

 which abound ! ' 



" The facts observed with much care and minutely 

 related in this note support the ' incontestable evi- 

 dence ' given by Dr. Jenner, Montagu, and Mrs. 

 Blackburn, so fully and conclusively, that I am at a 

 loss to understand how anyone who has not personally 

 investigated the matter thoroughly for himself could 

 allow himself to express so strong an opinion as Mr. 

 Seebohm has done in the italicised portion of the 

 above quotation." -■= 



The Rev. Alfred C. Smith mentions in Zoologist 

 for 1873, (p. 3474), "that Mr. Briggs had himself 

 (though I had overlooked the circumstance) seen 

 with his own eyes the attempted expulsion of a 

 young pipit from its nest by an infant cuckoo." 

 [Zool., ss. 914.) 



Mr. Oswin A. J. Lee, who has made very careful 

 observations on cuckoos and the behaviour of their 

 young, says : 



* Transactions of the Northumberland and Durham Natural 

 History Society, vol. viii, pp. 210, 217. 1886. 



