Dr. Dybowski's Facts. 89 



proof of this. As to jealousy of the male, that is 

 explained by later observation already referred to 

 that hens are in the minority, and the rule must be 

 not polygamy, but polyandry. 



The Rev. Charles Alfred Smith, in the Zoologist 

 for April, 1873, threw great doubt on the point 

 whether the young cuckoo does invariably throw the 

 birds of the foster-parents out of the nest, and he 

 also raised questions on other points. As he wrote 

 from personal observation in every case, his remarks 

 may claim regard. Though he did not dispute the 

 facts of the young of the foster-parents being thrown 

 out of the nest, he endeavoured to cast the blame for 

 this on the elder cuckoos, and quoted foreign obser- 

 vers, though it needs always to be remembered that 

 foreign families of cuckoos may, in quite different 

 circumstances, act quite differently from what ours 

 do, as indeed the American cuckoos are, in several 

 points, very different. In confirmation of his own 

 views, he cited the experience of Dr. Dybowski, given 

 in the jfournal fur Ornithologie, to the following 

 effect : 



" With the theory that the newly-hatched cuckoo 

 turns the young of its foster-mother, either mechan- 

 ically or involuntarily, out of the nest, I cannot 

 declare myself to coincide, since I have facts to pro- 

 duce which tend to quite different conclusions. For 

 we found in an uninhabited valley near the river 

 Alengui, in Dauria, a nest oi Anthus ricardi. It was 

 inserted in a depression at the foot of a rather large 

 heap of earth, whose surface up above projected over 

 the nest on all sides to a considerable extent. In this 

 nest there was only a young, still quite unfledged 



