228 FIELD AND HEDGEROW. 
nest they could be put, else, perhaps, they would be. 
There is no night-fceeding bird to feed the fern owl’s 
young. Does any one think the cuckoo could herself 
feed two young cuckoos? How many birds would it 
take to feed three young cuckoos ? Supposing there were 
jive young cuckoos in the nest, would it not take almost 
all the birds in a hedge to feed them? For the in- 
credible voracity of the young cuckoo—swallow, swallow, 
swallow, and gape, gape, gape—cannot be computed. 
The two robins or the pair of hedge-sparrows in whose 
nest the young cuckoo is bred, work the day through, 
and cannot satisfy him ; and the mother cuckoo is said 
‘to come and assist in feeding him at times, How, 
then, could the cuckoo feed two or three of its 
offspring and itself at the same time? Several 
other birds do not build nests—the plover, the fern owl. 
That is no evidence of lack of intelligence. The 
cuckoo’s difficulty, or one of its difficulties, seems to be 
in the providing sufficient food for its ravenous young. 
A half-fledged cuckoo is already a large bird, and needs 
a bulk of soft food for its support. Three of them 
would wear out their mother completely, especially if— 
as may possibly be the case—the male cuckoo will not 
help in feeding. This is the simplest explanation, I 
think ; yet, as I have often said before, we must not 
divave judge the ways of birds or animals or insects 
either by strict utility, or by crediting them with semi- 
supernatural intelligence. They have their fancies, likes 
and dislikes, and caprices. There are circumstances— 
perhaps far back in the life-history of their race—of 
which we know nothing, but which may influence their 
conduct unconsciously still, just as the crusades have. 
transmitted a mark to our minds to-day. Even though 
an explanation may satisfy us, it is by no means certain 
