2S6 COW BUNTING. 



faculties, exactly suited to their pursuits, sufficient to distin- 

 guish them from all others, and forming for them a character 

 solely and exclusively their own. This is particularly so among 

 the feathered race. If there be any case where these charac- 

 teristic features are not evident, it is owing to our want of 

 observation, to our little intercourse with that particular 

 tribe, or to that contempt for inferior animals, and all their 

 habitudes, which is but too general, and which bespeaks a 

 morose, unfeeling, and unreflecting mind. These peculiarities 

 are often surprising, always iustructive where understood, and 

 (as in the subject of our present chapter) at least amusing, 

 and worthy of being further investigated.* 



The most remarkable trait in the character of this species 

 is the unaccountable practice it has of dropping its eggs into 

 the nests of other birds, instead of building and hatching for 

 itself, and thus entirely abandoning its progeny to the care 



* In this curious species we have another instance of those -wonder- 

 ful provisions of nature, which have hitherto baffled the knowledge 

 and perseverance of man to discover for what uses they were intended. 

 The only authenticated instance of a like circumstance that we are 

 aware of is in the economy of the common cuckoo of Europe. Some 

 foreign species, which rank as true cuculi, are said to deposit their eggs 

 in the nests of other birds ; but I am not sure that the fact is confirmed. 

 With regard to the birds in question, there is little common between 

 them, except that both are migratory, and both deposit their eggs in 

 the nest of an alien. The cow bunting is polygamous ; and I strongly 

 suspect that our cuckoo is the same. In the deposition of the egg, the 

 mode of procedure is nearly similar ; great uneasiness, and a sort of 

 fretting,- previously, with a calm of quiet satisfaction afterwards. In 

 both species we have beautiful provisions to ensure the non-disturbance 

 of the intruder by its foster progeny : in the one, by a greater strength 

 easily overcoming and driving out the natural but more tender young ; 

 in all love of the natural offspring being destroyed in the parents, and 

 succeeded by a powerful desire to preserve and rear to maturity the 

 usurper of their rights : in the other, where the young would, in some 

 instances, be of a like size and strength, and where a combat might 

 prove fatal in an opposite direction to the intentions of Providence, all 

 necessity of contest is at once avoided by the eggs of the cow bunting 

 requiring a shorter period to hatch than any of the birds chosen 

 as foster parents. — Ed. 



