182 
FRANCIS H. HERRICK 
Jenner,i3 published in 1788, have attributed a series of highly 
specialized instincts to the young cuckoo, in accordance with 
which it burrows under any eggs or nest-mates which may be 
present, gets them on its broad and depressed back, climbs or 
pushes its way up the steep side of the nest, an shovels them all 
out over its rim. Eggs and young are eventually treated in this 
manner as often as they are returned, and if, as rarely happens, 
two cuckoos are hatched in the same nest, they struggle together 
until the weaker of the two is pitched out in the same manner. 
According to the accounts to be referred to below, this response 
appears at any time between the first and third day, when the 
little cuckoo is blind and naked, and dies down when the bird is 
from ten days to two weeks old, after which anything is tolerated 
in the nest. 
It has been sometimes stated that the first confirmatory obsera- 
tions of Jenner's controverted statements were first made by 
Mrs. Blackburn, and published in 1872, and her striking drawing 
oP'^ the infant cuckoo in the act of expelling a young mea, dow pipit 
from its nest has been widely copied. It should be noted, however, 
that the Jennerian story did not have to wait so long for support- 
ing evidence, for it was fully sustained in 1802 by Col. Montagu^^ 
in his excellent Ornithological Dictionary, in which we are more- 
over told that his own observations were actually made before 
those of Jenner, that is before June 18, 1787. Confirmatory obser- 
vations were again made by John Blackwall, before 1834, and fully 
described in his excellent, but little known Researches in Zool- 
ogy. Again the original account was supported in the fullest 
manner in 1838^^ by the correspondent of Wm. MacGillivray, 
i^Jenner, Edward. Observations on the natural history of the cuckoo; in a 
letter to John Hunter, Esq. Philosophical Transactions, vol. 78, pt. 2, pp. 219-237. 
London, 1788. 
1* "J. B." Cuckoo and pipit. Nature, vol. o, p. 383. London, 1872. 
1^ First appearing in "The pipits', Glasgow, 1872, and later in "Birds from 
Moidart," Edinburgh, 1895. 
1^ Montagu, Colonel G. Ornithologicat dictionarj^ of British birds, 2d. ed. 
by James Rennie., p. 118. London, 1831. 
Blackwall, John. Researches in zoology, London, 1834; 2d. ed. London, 1873. 
18 Op. cit., vol. 3, pp. 128-131. 
