2Q0 COW BUNTING. 



owner herself has begun to lay, and there are one or more 

 eggs in the nest before the cow bunting deposits hers, the 

 attachment of the proprietor is secured, and remains unshaken 

 until incubation is fully performed, and the little stranger is 

 able to provide for itself. 



The well-known practice of the young cuckoo of Europe 

 in turning out all the eggs and young which it feels around it, 

 almost as soon as it is hatched, has been detailed in a very 

 satisfactory and amusing manner by the amiable Dr Jenner,* 

 who has since risen to immortal celebrity in a much nobler 

 pursuit, and to whose genius and humanity the whole human 

 race are under everlasting obligations. In our cow bunting, 

 though no such habit has been observed, yet still there is 

 something mysterious in the disappearance of the nurse's own 

 eggs soon after the foundling is hatched, which happens regu- 

 larly before all the rest. From twelve to fourteen days is the 

 usual time of incubation with our small birds; but although 

 I cannot exactly fix the precise period requisite for the egg of 

 the cow bunting, I think I can say almost positively, that it 

 is a day or two less than the shortest of the above-mentioned 

 spaces ! In this singular circumstance we see a striking pro- 

 vision of the Deity ; for did this egg require a day or two 

 more, instead of so much less, than those among which it has 

 been dropped, the young it contained would in every instance 

 most inevitably perish, and thus, in a few years, the whole 

 species must become extinct. On the first appearance of the 

 young cow bunting, the parent being frequently obliged to 

 leave the nest to provide sustenance for the foundling, the 

 business of incubation is thus necessarily interrupted ; the dis- 

 position to continue it abates ; nature has now given a new 

 direction to the zeal of the parent ; and the remaining eggs, 

 within a day or two at most, generally disappear. In some 

 instances, indeed, they have been found on the ground near, 

 or below, the nest ; but this is rarely the case. 



I have never known more than one egg of the cow bunting 

 * See Philosophical Transactions for 1788, part ii. 



