42 l^ifi History of Commoti Cuckoo. 



persons accustomed to see the birds, for a nightjar 

 brooding looks very different indeed from a cuckoo — 

 in fact, it looks notoriously like a stump left there. 

 Besides, there have been in a few cases, cuckoos 

 lately observed sitting on eggs with no nest but 

 merely a depression in earth, after the manner of the 

 nightjar. 



Dr. Charles Creighton writes on this point : 



" Previous to 1771, or before Jenner, aged twenty- 

 one, came to board with him, Hunter was known to 

 have dissected hen-cuckoos, and had satisfied himself 

 that there was nothing in the anatomical disposition 

 of the viscera, as some before him had alleged, to 

 prevent the bird from sitting on eggs like any other 

 bird."- 



In a London newspaper of September 3, 1898, we 

 are told that in a London garden three young cuckoos 

 mi^'ht be seen fed by a pair of hedge-sparrows. 



If this is correct, and, unfortunately I have not had 

 a chance of verifying it, it would go some way in the 

 direction of proving that the young cuckoos do not 

 exercise towards each other the same efforts at turning 

 out of the nest as they do towards the young and eggs 

 of the foster-parents. And truly this would indicate 

 wonderful instinct or reasoning ; transferring the 

 whole process from a merely blind mechanical per- 

 formance to one that bordered on discrimination, 

 foresight, and method. This in a young, blind, and 

 as yet unfeathered nestling clearly discerning between 

 the young of its own kind and those of the foster 

 parents is, beyond expression, wonderful ; and may 



* Jenner and Vaccination, p. 9. Creighton quotes Daines Bar- 

 rington, (Phil. Trans,, vol. 62, 1771), for the first statement. 



