1842.] Malayan species of Cuculida. 1109 



birds to abandon their helpless later broods to starvation ! Whether 

 the instances adverted to by M. Audubon of the egg of the American 

 Piayas being found in other bird's nests happened at a late period 

 of the season, would be not uninteresting to ascertain. 



But there is a remarkable genus of Sturno-fringillidous birds in the 

 New World, the Molothrus of Mr. Swainson, consisting of one species 

 in North America, and another (recently discovered by Mr. Darwin) 

 in the Southern continent, both of which have been ascertained to 

 resemble the typical Cuculi in entrusting their eggs to the care of 

 other birds*; and a very interesting and minute account of the 

 Northern species (M. pecoris y the " Cow Bunting" of Wilson,) by 

 Mr. Ord, — the friend of Alexander Wilson, and continuator of 

 his American Ornithology, — will be found in Loudon's Magazine 

 of Natural History for February, 1836 (having been elicited, indeed, 

 by some remarks which I formerly published on the habits of the 

 British Cuckoo). From this article it appears, that Wilson was mis- 

 taken in his statement that " the Cow-bird continues to be seen so late 

 as the middle of June ; after which we see no more of them until 

 about the beginning or middle of October". Mr. Ord asserting that 

 they are common in Pennsylvania in July, from which I suppose 

 may be inferred that after that time they disappear — it being just 

 the period at which the adult Cuckoos quit England, and thus 

 affording, if true, a remarkable analogy tending to support the hypo- 

 thesis before noticed. 



Conducted, however, to this result by studying the parasitic birds 

 of temperate and Northern climates, it becomes desirable to ascertain 

 how far the circumstances connected with the propagation of those 

 of tropical countries may tend to confirm or overthrow such gener- 

 alizations as are based exclusively upon the former; and in India 

 especially, a wide field (in this as in everything else) is open to our 

 investigation, hitherto quite unexplored, and certainly one which 



* A strange oversight, in fact an abominable bit of careless writing, occurs in 



Mr. Swainson's notice of the habits of the Cuckoos, in his Habits and Instincts of 



Animals (p. 19), published in the series of Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopcedia. Passing 



j from the British species, whereof he iterates the current erroneous statement that 



| it invariably selects the nests of insectivorous birds to deposit its egg in, he re- 



i marks-" the North American Cuckoos, however, being of a different species, more 



j frequently lay their eggs in the nests of the Cow-pen birds {Molothrus pecoris)" 



&c ! ! ! Fine Ornithological doctrine this from Magister Artis! 



