OF SBLBOBNE. 
149 
What was said by a very ancient and sublime writer con- 
cerning the defect of natural affection in tlie ostrich, may be 
well applied to the bird we are talking of: 
She is hardened against her young ones, as though they 
were not her's : 
Because God hath deprived her of wisdom, neither hath 
he imparted to her understanding/' ^ 
Query. Does each female cuckoo lay but one egg in a 
season, or does she drop several in different nests according 
as opportunity offers ? ^ 
LETTER V. 
TO THE HONOURABLE DAINES BARKINGTON. 
Selborne, April 12, 1770. 
HEAUD many birds of several species sing 
last year after midsummer ; enough to prove 
that the summer solstice is not the period that 
puts a stop to the music of the woods. The 
yellowhammer, no doubt, persists with more 
steadiness than any other ; but the woodlark, the wren, the 
redbreast, the swallow, the whitethroat, the goldfinch, the 
common linnet, are all undoubted instances of the truth of 
what I advanced. 
If this severe season does not interrupt the regularity of 
the summer migrations, the blackcap will be here in two or 
three days. I wish it was in my power to procure you one 
of those songsters ; but I am no birdcatcher ; and so little 
and Professor A. Newton, in "Nature" of Nov. 18, 1869, and his new 
edition of Yarrell's " History of British Birds." Reference should also 
be made to Mr. Stevenson's chapter on the cuckoo, iu his " Birds of 
Norfolk," vol. i. p. 303, and, if the reader's patience is not then exhausted, 
to a couple of articles by the writer of this note, contributed to " Science 
Gossip" of May 1, 1870, and "The Field" of Nov. 22, 1873. — Ed. 
^ Job xxxix. 16, 17. ^ See p. 151, note 1. — Ed 
