12 Life History of Common Cuckoo. 



glad to hear what other ornithologists, anatomists, 

 and biologists have to say on that particular point. 

 The zygodactyle feet are very fully developed even in 

 the egg. 



I discount the idea of one writer in ornithology that 

 this form of foot is favourable for letting the cuckoo 

 stoop freely to the ground in certain positions to pick 

 insecfts off low-lying leaves ; because nature has 

 already advertised that another form of foot is at least 

 equally adapted to business of that kind, and with it 

 has supplied many birds which stoop low, and run, 

 hiding among grass and vegetation — notably, the 

 Corncrake and the Nightjar, which certainly does 

 stoop and run, and fly wondrously fleet, as well as 

 others. 



The writer of the article " Cuckoo '' in the Encyclo- 

 paedia Britannica, Professor Alfred Newton, to wit, 

 who is exceedingly cautious, and who wrote before 

 some of the most valuable and best authenticated 

 facts about the bird were published, is compelled to 

 accept this as proved, citing these two cases : — 



" The most satisfactory evidence on the point is that 

 of Herr Adolf Miiller, a forester of Gladenbach, in 

 Darmstadt, who says (Zoolog. Garten, 1866, pp. 374- 

 375) that through a telescope he watched a cuckoo as 

 she laid her egg on a bank, and then conveyed the 

 egg in her bill to a wagtail's nest. Herr Braune, a 

 forester at Griez, in the Principality of Reuss, shot a 

 hen cuckoo as she was leaving the nest of an icterine 

 warbler. In the oviduct of this cuckoo he found an 

 egg coloured very li^e that o^ the warbler ; and on 

 looking into the nest he fo. ' there an exactly 

 similar egg, which there can b d reasonable doubt 



