Mr. Rhett's Case. 129 



the nests at Mr. J. F. Rhett's house, near Charles- 

 town, in South CaroHna, direct from the words of the 

 persons there : 



" Two young cuckoos, nearly ready to fly, scrambled 

 off from their tenement among the branches of the 

 tree, and were caught by us, after a while. The nest 

 was taken and carefully handed to me. It still con- 

 tained three young cuckoos, all of different sizes, the 

 smallest apparently just hatched, the next in size 

 probably several days old, while the largest, covered 

 with pen-feathers, would have been able to leave the 

 nest in about a week. There were also in the nest 

 two eggs, one containing a chick, the other fresh or 

 lately laid. The two young birds which escaped from 

 the nest, clung so firmly to the branches by their feet, 

 that our attempts to dislodge them were of no avail, 

 and we were obliged to reach them with the hand. 

 On now looking at all these young birds, our surprise 

 was indeed great, as no two of them were of the 

 same size, which clearly showed that they had been 

 hatched at different periods, and I should have sup- 

 posed the largest to have been fully three weeks 

 older than any of the rest. Mr. Rhett assured us, 

 that he had observed the same in another nest . . . 

 and that eleven young cuckoos had been reared in it 

 in one season, young birds and eggs being in it 

 together for many weeks in succession. 



" On thinking this over," the account proceeds, " I 

 have felt most anxious to discover how many eggs the 

 cuckoo of Europe drops in one season. If it, as I 

 suspect, produces, like the American bird, not fewer 

 than eight or ten, or what may be called the amount 

 of two broods in a season, this circumstance would 



