146 
NATUBAL HISTORY 
other species, may it not be owing to the dams being 
engaged in incubation, while the young are concealed by the 
leaves ? 
Many times have I had the curiosity to open the stomachs 
of woodcocks and snipes, but nothing ever occurred that 
helped to explain to me what their subsistence might be : 
all that I could ever find was a soft mucus, among which lay 
many pellucid small gravels.^ 
LETTER lY. 
TO THE HONOURABLE DAINES BARRINGTON. 
SiiLBORNE, Feb. 19, 1770. 
OUR observation, that the cuckoo does not 
deposit its egg indiscriminately in the nest 
of the first bird that comes in its way, but 
probably looks out a nurse in some degree 
congenerous, with whom to intrust its 
young,^' is perfectly new to me, and struck me so forcibly, 
that I naturally fell into a train of thought that led me to 
consider whether the fact was so, and what reason there was 
^ That good observer, Mr. Thompson, in his " Natural History of 
Ireland." (Birds, vol. ii. p. 239) states that on examination of the 
stomachs of thirteen woodcocks, killed at different periods and in every 
kind of weather, from October to March, one was found to contain only 
smaU pebbles ; ten vegetable matter, chiefly Confervoe (in one instance 
an aquatic moss), and several of them worms of small or moderate size, 
insect larvae and aquatic coleoptera, together with a few pebbles. The 
vegetable matter, of which there is often a considerable quantity, 
probably remains intact after the gastric juice has acted on the worms 
and other animal fr)od, and thus appears disproportionate to the other 
contents. As to the food of snipe, he says (torn. cit. p. 268), " The 
contents of the stomach of seven of these birds, which were particularly 
examined, and all fi'om different localities, were as follows : — Of three 
shot in the month of January, two contained a few seeds, and the third 
was half filled with soit vegetable matter ; two shot in March exhibited 
the remains of v::;getable food, which resembled Confervoe; of two killed 
/ 
