FOOD OF CUCKOOS. 133 
Ordines and Genera are many of them new, expressive, and mas- 
terly. He has ventured to alter some, of the Linnsean genera 
with, sufficient show of reason. 
It might perhaps be mere accident that you saw so many 
s-wifts and no swallov^s at Staines ; because, in my long observa- 
tion of those birds, I never could discover the least degree of 
rivalry or hostility between the species. 
Ray remarks that birds of the gallincB order, as cocks and 
hens, partridges, and pheasants, &c. are pulveratrices, such as 
dust themselves, using that method of cleansing their feathers, 
and ridding themselves of their vermin. As far as I can observe, 
many birds that dust themselves never wash : and I once thought 
that those birds that wash themselves would never dust ; but 
here I find myself mistaken ; for common house-sparrows are 
great pulveratrices, being frequently seen grovelling and vrallow- 
ing in dusty roads ; and yet they are great washers. Does not 
the skylark dust?* 
Query. Might not Mahomet and his followers take one me- 
thod of purification from these jmlveratrices F because I find from 
travellers of credit that if a strict mussulman is journeying in a 
sandy desert where no water is to be found, at stated hours he 
strips off his clothes, and most scrupulously rubs his body over 
with sand or dust. 
A countryman told me he had found a young fern-ow^l in the 
nest of a small bird on the. ground ; and that it was fed by the 
little bird. I went to see this extraordinary phenomenon, and 
found that it was a young cuckoo hatched in the nest of a tit- 
lark : it was become vastly too big for its nest, appearing 
in tenui re 
Majores pennas nido extendisse 
and was very fierce and pugnacious, pursuing my finger, as I 
teazed it, for many feet from the nest, and sparring and buflfet- 
tmg with its wings like a game-cock. The dupe of a dam ap- 
peared at a distance, hovering about with meat in its mouth, and 
expressing the greatest solicitude. 
In July I saw several cuckoos skimming over a large pond ; 
and found, after some observation, that they were feeding on the 
libellulcB, or dragon-flies ; some of which they caught as they set- 
tled on the weeds, and some as they were on the wing. Notwith- 
* It does so, and never bathes ; and the same holds with its congener the wood-lark ; M'hereas 
all the pipit genus {anthus) are very partial to bathing. — Ed. 
