OBSERVATIONS ON THE CUCKOO. 8] 
Derby ; and as it is deserving of attention, I shall 
transcribe the entire passage. “In the beginning of 
July 1792,” Mr. Wilmot writes, “I was attending 
some labourers on my farm, when one of them said 
to me, ‘ there is a bird’s nest upon one of the coal- 
slack hills; the bird is now sitting, and is exactly 
like a Cuckoo, They say that Cuckoos never hatch 
their own eggs, otherwise I should have sworn it 
was one. He took me to the spot, it was in an 
open fallow ground; the bird was upon the nest; I 
stood and observed her some time, and was perfectly 
satisfied it was a Cuckoo. I then put my hand to- 
wards her, and she almost let me touch her before 
she rose from the nest, which she appeared to quit 
with uneasiness, skimming over the ground in the 
manner that a hen Partridge does when disturbed 
from a new-hatched brood, and went only to a thicket 
about forty or fifty yards from the nest, and con- 
tinued there as long as I stood to observe her, which 
was not many minutes. In ‘the nest, which was. 
barely a hole scratched out of the coal-slack in the 
manner of a'Plover’s nest, I observed three eggs, but 
did not touch them. As I had labourers constantly 
at work in that field, I went thither every day, and 
always looked to see if the bird was there, but did 
not disturb her for seven or eight days, when I was 
tempted to drive her from the nest, and found two 
young ones that appeared to have been hatched some 
days, but there was no appearance of the third egg. 
; G 
