FOOD OF CUCKOOS. 
191 
on and over the bowels, so as to make a large protuberance in 
the belly.* 
Induced by this assertion, we procured a cuckoo ; and, cut- 
ting open the breast-bone, and exposing the intestines to sight, 
found the crop lying as mentioned above. This stomach was 
large and round, and stuffed hard like a pincushion with food, 
which, upon nice examination, we found to consist of various 
insects ; such as small scarabs, spiders, and dragon flies ; the last 
of which we have seen cuckoos catching on the wing as they 
were just emerging out of the aurelia state. Among this farrago 
also were to be seen maggots, and many seeds, which belonged 
either to gooseberries, currants, cranberries, or some such fruit ; 
so that these? birds apparently subsist on insects and fruits : nor 
was there the least appearance of bones, feathers, or fur to support 
the idle notion of their being birds of prey.f 
The sternum in this bird seemed to us to be remarkably short, 
between which and the anus lay the crop, or craw, and imme- 
diately behind that the bowels against the back-bone. 
It must be allowed, as this anatomist observes, that the crop 
placed just upon the bowels must, especially when full, be in a 
very uneasy situation during the business of incubation ; yet the 
test will be to examine whether birds that are actually known 
to sit for certain are not formed in a similar manner. This en~ 
quiry I proposed to myself to make with a fern-owl, or goat- 
sucker, as soon as opportunity oflfered : because, if their forma- 
tion proves the same, the reason for incapacity in the cuckoo will 
be allowed to have been taken up somewhat hastily. 
Not long after a fern-owl was procured, which, from its habit 
and shape, we suspected might resemble the cuckoo in its internal 
construction. Nor were our suspicions ill-grounded ; for, upon 
the dissection, the crop, or craw, also lay behind the sternum, 
immediately on the viscera, between them and the skin of the 
belly. It was bulky, and stuffed hard with large phalcence, moths 
of several sorts, and their eggs, which no doubt had been forced 
out of those insects by the action of swallowing. 
Now as it appears that this bird, which is so well known to 
practise incubation, is formed in a similar manner with cuckoos, 
* Histoire de VAcademie Royale, 1752. 
t There is a notion prevalent that the stomach of the European cuckoo is internall}' coated 
wjth small pacis, the use of which, it has been stated, is to defend this organ against the irri- 
tating effects of those of caterpillars. Nothing of the kind exists, as I have often had occasion tw 
observe, upon dissection. — Ed. 
