NATURE'S REALM. 57 
in order that the wants of the interloper may 
be fully attended to. 
It is not known exactly what time the young 
cuckoos leave Europe. They have been seen 
in the fall of the year full-fledged, and as large 
as the parent birds when they arrived in May. 
Not being gregarious and never appearing in 
large numbers, it is no easy thing to trace 
their emigration from the country of their birth. 
Never more than two are seen together or in 
the same locality. These would hardly be no- 
ticed were it not for their well-known song, so 
different from that of all other birds in the 
countries where they breed. The young cuckoos 
never sing during the first year of their lives ; 
it is not until the next spring, when they return 
to the country in which they were born, that 
their well-known and welcome notes are heard, 
the harbingers of summer. 
There is hardly an instance known of any 
other bird emigrating by itself and unaccom- 
panied by its parents, or at least by older birds 
of the same species. But the young cuckoo 
has no other bird to steer its course for it 
over the pathless sea. It goes by itself, guided 
by that unerring instinct which, the more it is 
_ studied, the greater marvel it becomes, and we 
stand awed before one of Nature’s most stu- 
pendous and impenetrable mysteries. 
The cuckoo is a bird of great power of flight, 
and a journey trom England to Egypt would 
hardly take it more than three days. This re- 
markable swiftness of wing makes another dif- 
ficulty in tracing all the goings and comings of 
this most curious and remarkable member ot 
the feathered tribe. If cuckoos were gregari- 
ous and went in large flocks, much more would 
be known about them, and, if they were birds 
seen in moderately large numbers, we would 
have a much better opportunity of finding out 
their habits; but, as has been said already, 
they are what may be termed with strict truth 
rare birds. 
There is another peculiarity or mystery con- 
nected with the cuckoo that is worth mention- 
ing: it is never seen in spring or mating time 
without a small bird or two along with it, and 
this little attendant is generally of the lark spe- 
cies. When the cuckoo alights on a tree so 
does the little bird; when the master or mis- 
tress flies away so does the servant, and gen- 
erally at a respectable distance behind—about 
the distance usually seen between an equestri- 
enne and her groom. Why these little birds 
follow the cuckoo, and what their offices are, 
add to the impenetrable mysteries connected 
with this extraordinary bird—mysteries that 
probably will never be explained. 
It has been thought by some that the reason 
the cuckoo builds no nest is because it has not 
time ; that Europe and the countries in which 
it breeds do not afford it proper food, and that 
the countries that afford it such food are not 
such as its young could be hatched or raised 
in. This theory will not stand a moment's ex- 
amination, for it is very hard to see why any 
bird could not live for three months in any 
country in which it could live for six or seven 
weeks, and three months would give it ample 
time to build a nest and hatch its young like 
any other bird. Buta still stronger argument 
against this theory is furnished by the fact that 
the young birds remain in the country where 
they are born until late in the autumn, when 
they go—no one really knows where. 
Many species of birds of the genus Cuculide 
inhabit this continent, but none of them are 
surrounded with that mystery that is so char- 
acteristic of the European cuckoo, and none of 
them have so far excited the curiosity of the 
naturalist or touched the sentiment of the poet. 
