Birds. 



8167 



astonished to find a cuckoo's egg also in the nest. As my brother 

 could not have been absent more than two or three minutes at the 

 very outside, we of course immediately remarked the rapidity with 

 which the process of laying had taken place ; but our suspicions as to 

 the mode in which the egg had been conveyed gave way to certainty 

 upon the discovery being made that it was nearly cold, while that of 

 the pipit was still quite warm. Now, even supposing that the cuckoo 

 returned to the nest immediately after my brother left, is it at all pro- 

 bable that a newly-laid egg could have fallen to such a low tempera- 

 ture in so short a time, and if so, how was it that the pipit's egg did 

 not also cool ? I was at first rather inclined to give attention to the 

 fact that the latter contained a living bird, and in order to satisfy 

 myself upon the subject I that very evening procured a newly-laid 

 hen's egg, and one that was within a few days of hatching, and 

 placed them side by side in the open air : the result convinced me that 

 the difference between the temperature of the pipit's egg and that of 

 the cuckoo could not be thus accounted for. 



Repeated inquiry among my friends, and also among many scores 

 of birdsnesting boys, have furnished me with several instances of a 

 somewhat similar nature, the tendency of them all being to prove that 

 in most cases a remarkably short interval elapses between the arrival 

 of the cuckoo at the nest and the deposition of the egg. Upon an 

 average this interval may be roughly said to range between half a 

 minute and three minutes ; and any one who would assert that during 

 so short a space of time the egg is " laid," in the ordinary acceptation 

 of the term, would be compelled to admit, though obviously upon 

 very unsubstantial grounds, that the cuckoo is endowed with a power 

 of which other birds are destitute ; for we must remember that even a 

 barn-door hen, no matter how anxious she may be to lay, is seldom 

 in the nest for less than ten minutes or a quarter of an hour before 

 the egg is produced. I once thought to solve the difficulty by com- 

 paring the relative sizes of the eggs and of the parent birds, but 

 herein I failed ; for in the cuckoo, although the egg is remarkably 

 small, the reproductive organs are proportionately contracted in their 

 dimensions. Even were the contrary the case, it would be an inge- 

 nious cuckoo indeed that could lay a cold egg. 



With regard to the instance previously mentioned, in which a 

 female cuckoo, on being shot, dropped an egg upon the ground, 

 another one equally well developed being at the same time within the 

 oviduct, the truth appears self-evident. The egg which fell upon the 

 ground must have been laid some hours previously, and the undigested 



