OBSERVATIONS ON THE CUCKOO. 69 
bate their own eggs and bring up their own young; 
but all the instances brought forward in support of 
this opinion, except one, are totally undeserving of 
notice, and this might have been passed over without 
comment also if Dr. Darwin*, the Hon. Daines Bar- 
ringtont, and the Rev. W. Bingley {t had not seemed 
to consider it conclusive and incontrovertible. The 
circumstance is thus related by Darwin. “As the 
Rev. Mr. Stafford was walking in Glossop Dale, in 
the Peak of Derbyshire, he saw a Cuckoo rise from 
its nest. The nest was on the stump of a tree, that 
had been some time felled, among some chips that 
were in part turned grey, so as much to resemble the 
colour of the bird. In this nest were two young 
Cuckoos : tying a string about the leg of one of them, 
he pegged the other end of it to the ground, and very 
frequently for many days beheld the old Cuckoo feed 
these (her young) as he stood very near them.’ That 
Mr. Stafford must have been mistaken needs scarcely 
to be insisted on, since Dr. Jenner has shown that 
when two young Cuckoos happen to be hatched in 
the same nest, the stronger invariably turns out the 
weaker. The nest which Mr. Stafford found, from 
the number of young it contained, most probably 
belonged to a Goatsucker, as I know that this spe- 
cies, which seldom lays more than two or three eggs, 
* « Zoonomia,’ vol. i. pp. 172, 173. 
+ ‘ Miscellanies,’ p. 255. 
+ ‘Animal Biography,’ vol. ii. pp. 299, 300. 
