CUCULUS CANOEJJS. 285 



would appear to be of the common fowl kind, viz. hollow or concave on 

 the inside, and convex on the outside, and rounded on that edge made 

 by the termination of the feathers. 



[Order Scansores.] 



The Cuckoo \Cuculus canorus, Linn.]. 



The cuckoo has no crop. The oesophagus is pretty large. The 

 stomach is white, much the shape of a kidney-bean, and the tendinous 

 part is nearest the concave edge : it is not very strong, hardly as strong 

 as a peewit's. Its situation is as common. In some cuckoos I have 

 found the inner surface [of the stomach] hairy, and the direction of the 

 hair is round the centre tendon on each side, and in the middle of this 

 centre there is a small fleshy knob, like a small nipple 1 . In some this 

 hairy coat peeled off with a thin membrane ; in others it came off with- 

 out any coat ; and in a hen-cuckoo there were no hairs at all. 



The gall-bladder is very small. The duodenum is as common. The 

 jejunum makes a fold upon itself, which is pretty large at the bend ; it 

 then makes a close fold on itself, at the termination of which com- 

 mences the rectum, or where the cseca are inserted. The caeca are short 

 and small. The length of the whole intestines is three times and a half 

 the length of the body of the animal : the rectum is nearly half that 

 length, and is pretty large at the anus. 



It has no cartilage to the under eyelid, and but one punctum 

 lacrymale. 



The cuckoo has yellow legs ; the bill is dark- coloured on the upper 

 part, yellow underneath, excepting at the point : the mouth and tongue 

 are orange-coloured : I have seen cuckoos pick beetles and caterpillars, 

 and have immediately shot them and found the same in their stomach. 



1 [In a cuckoo in which I found the stomach in this state, they were the distichous 

 hairs of the larva of the tiger-moth (Arctia Cajd). 



Hunter, in adducing evidence of the regular or rotatory action of the gastric muscles, 

 writes : — •" The same motion seems also to take place in the bird-kind ; and of tins the 

 cuckoo is an example ; which, in certain seasons, living on caterpillars, some of whom 

 have hairs of a considerable length on their bodies, the ends of these are found 

 sticking in the inner horny coat of the stomach or gizzard, while the hairs themselves 

 are laid flat on its surface ; not in every direction, which would be the case if there 

 was no regular motion, but all one way, arising from a central point placed in the 

 middle of the horny part ; and the appearance on the surface of both sides of the 

 gizzard evidently corresponding. These two facts prove, in my opinion, a regular 

 circular motion taking place in the gizzard and membranous stomach ; and, there- 

 fore, most probably, something similar is carried on in stomachs of all the various 

 kinds." — John Hunter, On the Animal Economy, 8vo, ed. 1S37, p. 93.] 



