158 Darwin and Romanes dealt with. 



normal cases, leads us justifiably to infer that it must 

 be yet greater in the cuckoo's case. 



Consideration of these points from this line of fact 

 and reasoning removes again the problem of the 

 cuckoo entirely from time and pressure of migratory 

 instinct, as Darwin and Romanes, following Jenner, 

 put it, to the influence of promiscuity or polyandry 

 (nearly allied), combined with the non-brooding and 

 non-pause, strictly speaking, with regard to sexual 

 intercourse. This is the line which further study 

 of the cuckoos, to be really fruitful, everywhere must 

 take ; and by it the empty notion of Mr. Romanes, 

 " that the deposition of a cuckoo's egg is compara- 

 tively an exceedingly rare event," will, unless we are 

 all mistaken, be found one of the most baseless things 

 ever written by a wise and clever man. 



And then, for a moment, glance at one sentence 

 from the pen of Dr. Russel Wallace : 



" It is, as we commenced by remarking, a ' struggle 

 for existence,' in which the weakest and least per- 

 fectly organised must always succumb." ^■ 



Well, now, just look at the small birds and the 

 cuckoo. Is there discrimination there — any what- 

 ever ? If there is on the part of the adult cuckoos, 

 it is for the strong parents, all fitted to be very active 

 and to feed their greedy child ; but the proper pro- 

 geny of the foster parents all go, and the assump- 

 tion from the discrimination would be that they were 

 of this bird " fittest to survive." The young cuckoos 

 often survi\'e ; are they the " fittest " over these 

 strong small birds ? — which, by the way, are not here 



* Contr. to Natural Selection, p. 33. 



