444 REPTILES AND BIRDS. 



themselves to a cage ; but they are always troublesome, on account 

 of their quarrelsome habits, which prevents them from living caged 

 with feathered companions. 



Cuckoos are celebrated for the peculiar manner in which they 

 raise their progeny. The females do not build a nest or cover 

 their eggs, neither do they take care of their young. They lay 

 their eggs in the nests of other birds, generally in those of little 

 insectivorous Passerines, such as the Lark, the Robin, Hedge Sparrow, 

 Redthroat, Nightingale, Thrush, Blackbird, and sometimes also in 

 those of the Magpie, Turtle-Dove, and Wood Pigeon. . They leave 

 the care of hatching their eggs, even of feeding their young until 

 they are completely developed, to these strangers. Different explana- 

 tions have been imagined to justify the anomaly of the cuckoo 

 being a hard-hearted mother. We owe to M. Florenf-Prevost the 

 possession of certain information on this point which had long re- 

 mained in obscurity. According to this naturalist, Cuckoos are poly- 

 gamous, but in a reverse sense to other birds. Whilst among them 

 males have several wives, with Cuckoos it is the females that have 

 several husbands, because the stronger sex is much more numerous 

 than the weaker. These ladies, as might be expected of creatures 

 with such proclivities, have no fixed home. At the breeding-time 

 they wander from one district to another, reside two or three days 

 with a mate at one place, and then abandon him, according to incli- 

 nation. It is at this time that the males so frequently utter the cry 

 known to all the world, and from which the bird derives its name ; 

 it is a pleading call of love to the females, which in their turn 

 reply by kind responsive notes. Cuckoos lay eight or ten eggs in 

 the space of a few weeks. When an egg has been laid, the female 

 seizes it in her beak, and carries it to the first unoccupied nest in 

 the vicinity, and there deposits it, profiting by the absence of the 

 proprietor, which would certainly oppose such an addition. A 

 Red-throat has been seen to return unexpectedly, and force the 

 stranger to retire with her burden. The next egg is placed in a 

 neighbouring nest, but never in the same as the first. The mother 

 is doubtlessly conscious of the unfortunate position she would place 

 her two nurslings in if she acted othenvise, for it would certainly be 

 impossible for two little Passerines to supply the wants of two such 

 voracious fledglings as young Cuckoos. Pertinent to this, we will 

 mention a fact that we have not seen stated in any work on natural 

 history. It often happens that the female Cuckoo takes from the 

 nest one of the eggs of the Passerine, breaks it with her beak, and 

 scatters the shell. Thus, when the mother returns, she finds the 



