THE CtrCEOO. 107 



Many times Imve I had the curiosity to open the stomachs 

 of woodcocks and snipes ; hut nothing ever occuiTsd that 

 helped to explain to me what their subsistence might be; all 

 that I could ever find was a soft mucus, among which lay 

 many pelludd smaJl gravels. 



LJITTEE XXX. 



TO THJ3 SAME. 



Selborne, Feb. 19, 177Q. 

 Dead Sie, — Your observation, that "the cuckoo does not 

 deposit its egg indiscriminately in the nest of the first bird 

 that comes ia its way, but probably looks out a nurse ia 

 some degree congenerous, with whom to entrust its young," * 

 is perfectly new to me ; and struck me so forcibly, that I 

 naturally fell into a traia of thought that led me to consider 

 whether the fact were so, and what reason there was for it. 

 When I came to recollect and inquire, I could not find that 

 any cuckoo had ever been seen in these parts, except in the 

 nest of the wagtail, the hedge-sparrow, the titlark, the white- 

 throat and the red-breast, all soft-billed insectivorous birds. 

 The excellent Mr. WiEughby mentions the nest of the 

 pahmbus, (ring-dove,) and oi th.e frinffilla, (chaffinch,) birds 

 that subsist on acorns and grains, and such hard food ; but 

 then he does not mention them as of his own knowledge ; but 

 says afterwards, that he saw himself a wagtail feeding a 

 cuckoo. It appears hardly possible that a soft-bUled bird 



* Providence, or rather the great Creator, who does everything for the hest, 

 has so ordained it that the cuckoo only deposits its eggs in those nests in 

 ■whiclt the young will he fed with the food most congenial with their nature, 

 in fact in those of hirds strictly insectivorous. It is a curious fact, and one I 

 believe not hitherto noticed by naturalists, that the cuckoo deposits its egg in 

 the nest of the titlark, robin, wagtail, &c., by means of its foot. If the bird 

 sat on the nest while the egg was laid, the weight of its body would crush the 

 nest, and cause it to be forsaken, and thus one of the ends of Providence 

 would he defeated. I have found the eggs of a cuckoo in the nest of a 

 white-throat, built in so small a hole in a gardea'wall that it was absolutely 

 impossible for the cuckoo to have got into it. — Ed, 



