Life- History of the Cuckoo. 



121 



another nest which she has previously selected : and so on till her 

 whole complement of four or five or six eggs is laid i 1 but never on 

 any occasion does she lay two eggs in the same nest : so that 

 although it is true that two Cuckoo's eggs have been sometimes 

 found in the same nest, these were without doubt from different 

 parent birds, and by no means the eggs of the same individual. 2 



But now if the egg of the Cuckoo was at all proportioned to the 

 size of the bird, it would not only at once attract the attention and 

 alarm of the foster parent, but it would be impossible for so dimi- 

 nutive a nurse to brood over and hatch it : and therefore Nature, 

 who never does anything by halves, but provides for every emer- 

 gency, has given a strange disproportion in the egg of the bird, to 

 the size of the parent Cuckoo : (the egg of the Cuckoo being no 

 larger than that of the Lark, 3 though the relative size of the two 

 birds is as four to one) a disproportion however, the necessity for 

 which is most apparent, if the little foster parent is to be duped 

 into believing the egg of the intruder to be her own. 



The Cuckoo then, having laid her eggs of comparatively dimi- 

 nutive size, and entrusted each to the charge of carefully selected 

 foster parents, is by many supposed to leave them to their fate, and 

 to take no farther interest in the matter. 4 But this does not seem 

 to be the case. 5 On the contrary, (and for this I have the high 

 authority of Dr. Gray, of the British Museum) the Cuckoo has 

 been observed to frequent the neighbourhood, and watch near the 

 nest during the whole period of incubation ; and then when the 

 eggs are hatched, it is the parent Cuckoo, 6 and not the young one 



1 Colonel Montagu dissected a Cuckoo which had in her four or five eggs. 

 [Omith. Diet.] Mr. Rennie thinks it lays a second time. Blumenbach says she 

 lays six eggs in the spring from time to time. Jesse's gleanings in Nat. Hist, 

 p. 125. Naturalist for 1851, p. 162. 



2 Zoologist 8823, 9325. Yarrell's British Birds, vol., ii. p. 192. Montagu's 

 Ornith. Diet. Introduction, p. ix. 



3 Yarrell in loco, vol. ii., p. 191. Bewick, vol., i. p. 108. 



* Zoologist, 1638. 



5 Ibis vol. iv. p. 384. Wood's Illustrated Natural History, vol. ii., p. 572. 



6 Zoologist, 2589, 2603, 4895, 6676, 8166, 8195, 8235, 8681. Jesse's Glean- 

 ings in Natural History, p. 123, 



