26 Life History of Common Cuckoo. 



having taken up their abode elsewhere with their own 

 nestlings, had not been able to feed both their own 

 young and the cuckoo." '■' 



I am perfedlly familiar with the paragraph on the 

 Cuckoo, which Mr. Waterton threw, rather inconsis- 

 tently, into his essay on the Jay [Natural History 

 Essays, ist series), and in which he ridiculed the idea 

 of the young cuckoo having any such power. His 

 remarks about the old bird always remaining on the 

 nest during the whole of the day on which the chick is 

 excluded from the shell, in order to protect it, wants 

 qualification ; there are, as we shall specially see, 

 reasons why she must sometimes leave the nest on 

 that day, and even when cleaning and drying the 

 young bird she must be on the edge of the nest, not 

 sitting on it strictly. But even though we admitted 

 that Mr. Waterton was correct here as regards 

 normal cases, it certainly is not true when a young 

 cuckoo has been hatched ; for somehow or other he 

 has the power not to let her do so, as comes out well 

 in Mr. J. Hancock's observations, and is amply con- 

 firmed by my own ; and this, on the very first day to 

 a certain degree, and yet more on the second or third 

 day, when generally he wishes to begin more definite 

 operations. I am quite familiar, too, with the bit in 

 the essay on " the Wren, the Hedgesparrow, and the 

 Robin " (second series), which is nothing more nor 

 less than a rough condensed repetition of what he had 

 said as above. 



Mr. Waterton was so good an observer and so true 

 a lover of the birds that I should indeed be sorry were 

 I forced to expose some of his errors and shortcomings 



'Zoologist, May, 1873. 



