74 COW BUNTING. 



dry. In this state it is sometimes met with, and laid in hy_ the Cow 

 Bunting ; the result of which I have invariably found to be the deser- 

 tion of the nest by its rightful owner, and the consequent loss of the egg 

 thus dropped in it by the intruder. But when the owner herself has 

 begun to lay, and there are one or more eggs in the nest before the Cow 

 Bunting deposits hers, the attachment of the proprietor is secured, and 

 reinains unshaken until incubation is fully performed, and the little 

 stranger is able to provide for itself. 



The well known practice of the young Cuckoo of Europe in turning 

 out all the eggs and young which it feels around it, almost as soon as it 

 is hatched, has been detailed in a very satisfactory and amusing man- 

 ner by the amiable Dr. Jenner,* who has since risen to immortal cele- 

 brity, in a much nobler pursuit ; and to whose genius and humanity the 

 whole human race are under everlasting obligations. In our Cow Bunt- 

 ing, though no such habit has been observed, yet still there is something 

 mysterious in the disappearance of the nurse's own eggs soon after the 

 foundling is hatched, which happens regularly before all the rest. From 

 twelve to fourteen days is the usual time of incubation with our small 

 birds ; but although I cannot exactly fix the precise period requisite for 

 the egg of the Cow Bunting, I think I can say almost positively, that it 

 is a day or two less than the shortest of the above-mentioned spaces ! 

 In this singular circumstance we see a striking provision of the Deity ; 

 for did this egg require a day or two more instead of so much less than 

 those among which it has been dropped, the young it contained would 

 in every instance most inevitably perish ; and thus in a few years the 

 whole species must become extinct. On the first appearance of the 

 young Cow Bunting, the parent being frequently obliged to leave the 

 nest to provide sustenance for the foundling, the business of incubation 

 is thus necessarily interrupted ; the disposition to continue it abates ; 

 nature has now given a new direction to the zeal of the parent, and the 

 remaining eggs, within a day or two at most, generally disappear. In 

 some instances, indeed, they have been found on the ground near, or 

 below, the nest; but this is rarely the case. 



I have never known more than one egg of the Cow Bunting dropped 

 in the same nest. This egg is somewhat larger than that of the Blue- 

 bird, thickly sprinkled with grains of pale brown on a dirty white 

 ground. It is of a size proportionable to that of the bird. 



So extraordinary and unaccountable is this habit, that I have some- 

 times thought it might not be general among the whole of this species 

 in every situation ; that the extreme heat of our summers, though suita- 

 ble enough for their young, might be too much for the comfortable resi- 

 dence of the parents ; that, therefore, in their way to the north, through 



* See Philosophical Transactions for 1788, Part II. 



