270 Calls and Young Cuckoo Birds. 



chance offering. This is to put a cuckoo's egg, taken 

 from the nest of meadow-pipit or hedge - sparrow 

 under a canary hen or other caged bird along with 

 hers, modifying her food as far as may be in favour of 

 the cuckoo, then to watch how the cuckoo conducts 

 himself towards the young, as also how he developes 

 notes and song. I should be pleased if others would 

 try similar experiments, and put themselves into com- 

 munication with me that we may compare notes. 



A correspondent of the Anti-jfacobin, who there 

 recorded some very nice natural history observations, 

 made these remarks about a variation in the cuckoo- 

 note heard by him : 



" Twice only and that in the same part of Lanca- 

 shire have I heard the cuckoo pause on his first note 

 — cuck-oo Click, and so abruptly terminate. Probably 

 some insect came within clutch of his beak and 

 stopped his song, with the hope, as Horace says, of 

 plus dapis. Apropos of cuckoos, a lively little boy, 

 bred among Mayfair chimney pots, was taken to a 

 country haunt for the first time of conscious observa- 

 tion, and hearing the fond bird calling its own name, 

 with which sound he was previously familiar only 

 through a cuckoo clock on the stairs of his home, 

 turned a face of childish surprise to his nurse and ex- 

 claimed among the hedgerows, " But where's the 

 clock ? " 



Mr. G. D. Leslie to Mario, under date 27th June, 

 i88g, writes : 



" The cuckoo, which has been singing for the last 

 eight weeks, has begun that absurd alteration in his 

 notes which is a pecuHarity of the bird ; he no longer 

 says cuckoo, but cuck-cuckoo and cuckoo-cuck. 



