190 COW BUNTING. 
It is well known to those who have paid attention to the manners of 
birds, that, after their nest is fully finished, a day or two generally 
elapses before the female begins to lay. This delay is in most cases 
necessary to give firmness to the yet damp materials, and allow them’ 
time to dry. In this state it is sometimes met with, and laid in by the 
Cow Bunting; the result of which I have invariably found to be the 
desertion 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 remains 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 turn- 
ing 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 
manner by the amiable Dr. Jenner,* who has since risen to immortal 
celebrity in a much nobler pursuit; and to whose genius and humani- 
ty the whole human race are under everlasting obligations. In our 
Cow Bunting, 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 incu- 
bation 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 sus- 
tenance 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 in- 
stances, 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 extréme heat of our summers, though suit- 
able enough for their young, might be too much for the comfortable 
residence of the parents ; that, therefore, in their way to the north, 
through our climate, they were induced to secure suitable places for 
their progeny ; and that in the regions where they more generally 
pass the summer, they might perhaps build nests for themselves, and 
* See Philosophical Trans wtions for 1788, part it. 
