CUCKOO. Class II. 



The reproach seems to arise from this bird 

 making use of the bed or nest of another to de- 

 posit its eggs in ;* leaving the care of its young 

 to a wrong parent; but Juvenal with more jus- 

 tice gives the infamy to the bird in whose nest 

 the supposititious eggs were layed, 



Tu till tunc curruca places/? 



A water- wagtail, a yellow hammer, or hedge- 

 sparrow, J is generally the nurse of the young 

 cuckoos ; who, if they happen to be hatched at 

 the same time with the genuine offspring, 

 quickly destroy them, by ejecting them from the 

 nest. This want in the cuckoo of the common 

 attention other birds have to their young, seems 

 to arise from some defect in its make, which dis- 

 ables it from incubation ; but what that is, we 

 confess ourselves ignorant, referring the inquiry 

 to some skilful anatomist. A friend tells me 

 that the stomach is uncommonly large, even so 

 as to reach almost to the vent: may not the 



* The eggs are rather bigger than those of the hedge-sparrow, 

 elongated in shape, of a pale greenish grey, mottled thickly with 

 purplish ash-color. J. L. 



t Sat. VI. 275. 



X I have been eye-witness to two instances : when a boy I 

 saw a young cuckoo taken out of the nest of a hedge-sparrow : 

 and in 1773 took another out of that of a yellow hammer: the 

 old yellow hammer seemed as anxious about the loss as if it had 

 been its proper offspring. 



