Mr. y. Gould's Observations. 23 



" In only one case have I heard of a young cuckoo 

 faihng to destroy the whole brood. This was a 

 young robin which took up its position among the 

 ivy rootlets beside the nest, from which the cuckoo 

 could not eject it. Both birds eventually flew." 



Mr. Kearton has the remark : " The young cuckoo 

 turns out all the other members of the nest in which 

 it is hatched, an operation to which I was witness on 

 one occasion." '■■'■ 



In 1837 J. Gould wrote thus in the Birds of 

 Europe : 



" Shortly after the young cuckoo is excluded from 

 the shell, it attains so much strength as to be able to 

 eject the true young from the nest, itself remaining 

 the sole occupant ; and, in fact, from its large size 

 and ravenous appetite it is as much as these substi- 

 tuted parents can do to supply it with food." That 

 is good; but in his Birds of Britain (1873) he gives 

 a beautiful drawing of the young birds thrown out by 

 a young cuckoo, yet writes thus : " May we not more 

 readily believe that the young have been thrown out 

 by the foster-parents, who, having bestowed all their 

 attention on the parasite, thus cause the death of 

 their own young, which are then cleared out of the 

 nest in the same way as broken eggshells, fseces, and 

 other extraneous matters are. ... I do not believe 

 that on the third day the young cuckoo has the power 

 to throw out all the occupants of the nest." Mr. 

 Gould's volte face is funny ; he harks back on an old 

 idea at the very time when the actual process of 

 turning out had been observed and recorded. 



This pious wish or hope expressed above for the 



* British Birds' Nesis, p. 42. 



