Use of Imitative Element. 8i 



X. 



Dr. Bowdler Sharpe tells a story which illustrates 

 well one use of the imitative element in the cuckoo. 

 The male bird is striped and barred in the breast and 

 is in head and expression very hawk-like — an aspect 

 he can emphasize by mode of flight, etc. 



On one occasion a friend of his was desirous to 

 observe a whinchat which was busy in the process of 

 laying its eggs. The friend sat down in a protected 

 corner and remained perfectly still and quiet, and 

 what was his surprise very soon to see a female 

 cuckoo come near and hide herself in the long grass. 

 Then, in a very little time, the male cuckoo came and 

 flew round and round, putting on his most hawk-lixe 

 expression ; the whinchats were frightened and flew 

 off, the male cuckoo after them. This furnished a 

 fine opportunity for the female cuckoo to deposit her 

 egg in the nest of the whinchats which ere long re- 

 turned, of course, to do the needful, foolish little 

 simpletons, for the egg of the would-be hawk. Here 

 is a case, said Dr. Bowdler Sharpe, where the resem- 

 blance of the male cuckoo to the hawk was clearly of 

 use to it. 



But more may be suggested by this than Dr. 

 Bowdler Sharpe intends or foresaw. All this was 

 scarcely needed, surely, to allow the hen-cuckoo to 

 drop into the nest an egg with her bill — the work of a 

 moment. But perhaps she had more to do. Mr. E. 

 Blyth believed that the canorus, when she deposited 

 her egg, did either destroy or turn out some of the 

 legitimate eggs of the nest, and he goes^ton to say : 



" From many experiments which I have tried, I 



