X PREFACE. 



first relates to the Cuckoo, and was obligingly communicated by Mr. 

 Yarrell : it is related by Mr. Newby (Zool. 2589) that a yellow 

 hammer's nest, on a Saturday, contained some young birds just 

 hatched ; on the Sunday the old bird was found sitting in the same 

 nest on the solitary egg of a cuckoo, and the young yellow hammers 

 were lying dead on the ground : there is no evidence to show that the 

 parent yellow hammer or parent cuckoo turned the young ones out of 

 the nest; but it is quite certain that their forcible ejection was not 

 served on them by a young cuckoo hatched in the same nest, which 

 is the hypothesis almost universally received. The second fact is the 

 hybernating of Swallows in fissures of the rock at Hastings, related 

 by Mr. Fitton (Zool. 2590), and this in such immense quantities as to 

 fill three railway barrows : this seems to realize the views of our older 

 naturalists ; but the facts relative to migration are so well known that 

 we must ever regard migration as the rule, hybernation the exception. 

 The third incident is the appearance of the Great Bustard on Salis- 

 bury Plain, as recorded by Mr. Waterhouse (Zool. 2590), who supposes 

 the bird to have been a female : this supposition is extremely proba- 

 ble, as the males have been long known to leave the task of incuba- 

 tion and the cares of education to the females, while they migrate 

 southward at the approach of autumn. Although the bustard is so 

 large and heavy a bird, it is quite capable of long-continued flight; 

 and, being extremely abundant in Spain and many parts of France, it 

 is not at all unlikely that it would frequently visit our shores in the 

 summer, if allowed to remain in peace ; but there is now so great a 

 desire to obtain ornithological rarities when they occur, that so con- 

 spicuous a bird as the bustard has little chance of escape. The only 

 other occurrence I shall mention is the woodchat {Lanius ruftis), one 

 of our very rarest British birds, at the Scilly Isles, a notice of which 

 is communicated (Zool. 2620) by my very obliging contributor, Mr. 

 Rodd ; and from his description of the specimen there is scarcely a 

 doubt that it was a bird of the year, and bred in this country. 



In British Reptiles nothing remarkable has occurred; but 1 have 

 been favoured with a communication, published in the February 



