Mr. Beddard's Paper. 235 



but stood on the floor, on which she had laid an egg, 

 and to all appearance was standing guard over it." 



This, which is most evident from these facts now 

 recited, bears vast significance in favour of evolution, 

 in such a marked manner, indeed, that Professor 

 Alfred Newton, determinedly closing his eyes to it, is 

 a most peculiar spectacle in these, the closing years 

 of the igth century. We have certain clear results 

 in our country — results that would seem to lie far 

 back, due to original instinct, were it not for unchal- 

 lengeable proofs of return on an earlier habit now 

 and then. Behold, in America, certain clear steps in 

 the process, coinciding with remarkable progress in 

 occupation and improvement in land, and the cutting 

 down of forest, and planting of fruit and thin-leaved 

 trees. And yet Professor Alfred Newton will not see 

 in these facts any significance at all. None are so 

 blind as those who will not see ! 



Mr. Beddard, in his careful and almost exhaustive 

 paper on the anatomical structure of the cuckoo (P. 

 Z. Soc, 1885, pp. 168 — 179), decides that no true 

 mark of classification can be found in the gall- 

 bladder ; and he finds a broad line of separation 

 between the genera of the old world and the new in 

 the ventral tract — in the Cuculus, Chrysococcyx, Caco- 

 mantis, and Coccystes (?) of the old world it is a 

 single tract at its commencement, whereas in the 

 genera Saurothea, Diplopterus (?), Piaya, and Coccy- 

 zus of the new world it is double ; but, certainly, 

 general tendency and habit are not much modified by 

 that. 



The two common cuckoos of the Bahamas and the 

 West India Islands— the American cuckoo and the 



