" Out of Nature." 193 



breeding was going on with the canaries, had their 

 free fly about all day, and agreed well with the 

 canaries — the hen linnet, unpaired, especially taking 

 a vast deal of interest in the sitting and in the young 

 ones when they came. But the point on which I 

 mean to dwell is this, that these young birds, the 

 very day after their eyes were open, knew unhesi- 

 tatingly whenever either of these three birds went 

 near the nest where they were, that they were not 

 their father or mother, and drew down their heads 

 with surprising celerity ; whereas, when father or 

 mother came, they set up their heads to be fed. 

 Now, as the goldfinch mule was not so strikingly un- 

 like the spangled or lizard canary cock, this decision 

 in recognition surprised me, and that from the very 

 first, and the thing never altered so long as the birds 

 were in the nest ; though, after flight, they showed 

 no particular aversion to either of the three birds, 

 and were indeed very friendly with the hen linnet — 

 the unlikest to them of all. If observation should 

 prove that this is generally the case, then the ap- 

 parent inability of certain wild birds to detect the 

 difference between their own progeny and the young 

 cuckoo is all the more wonderful, and, in fact, " out 

 of nature." 



XXVI. 



Since Mr. Darwin, indeed naturalists have become 

 all too fond of " may be's " — which as we Scotch school 

 boys were wont to say are not good honey bees. The 

 determination, for example, of these parrots in New 

 Zealand, called keas, to sheep — kilhng and blood- 



