368 MR. J. H. GURNEY ON THE ECONOMY OP THE CUCKOO. 
Professor Newton has pointed out that in the second century, (Elian 
had almost arrived at the truth (De Nat. Anim. iii. xxx.) ; but 
in 1770, the idea of “a nurse in some degree congenerous” was 
perfectly new to Gilbert White. It is one of the most curious 
things in ornithology, but Professor Newton adds a caution lest 
any should consider that the Cuckoo or any other bird can 
voluntarily influence the colour of the egg about to be laid. Over 
that she can have no control, and it is too much to suppose that 
having laid her egg on the ground, a Cuckoo would look at it, 
and deliberate what species of bird’s nest would be the best to 
put it into. What is argued, by Baldamus and others since him, 
is that each individual Cuckoo is parasitic to one or two species, 
and has power to lay only one type of egg, and in this the Guillemot 
resembles it, but the Guillemot has need to know its own egg 
which the Cuckoo has not.* Further it seems reasonable to 
suppose that any Cuckoo will by preference lay in the nest of the 
species which brought her up. 
An egg at Scoulton, on June 20th, in a Reed Warbler’s nest, 
was of the reddish type. Here at least was no resemblance. The 
Cuckoo was close at hand, and perhaps it was a consciousness of 
wrong colour which rendered her anxious, there being no other egg 
in the nest. My friend, Mr. Frank Norgate, has obtained single 
Cuckoo’s eggs in several odd situations, in Norfolk and Suffolk, 
such as (1) lying on the bare earth in a garden, (2) the exposed top 
of a garden wall, (3) from a nest behind wire netting, and (4) from 
a nest underneath tiles. The latter must have been deposited 
in the dark, but this, perhaps, is not very infrequent ; and the sight 
of birds is much clearer than human vision (cf. Trans. Norfolk 
and Norwich Nat. Soe. vol. ii. p. 148) as is abundantly proved 
For instance, at Mr. Buxton’s place near Aylsham, a young Cuckoo 
was reared in a hole in a stump, only 3j inches in diameter, and 
28 inches deep. No one saw how the Cuckoo crawled down 
that narrow passage with an egg in her mouth, where the 
light must have been excluded by her own body blocking the 
entrance, and having deposited the egg, turned round and got back 
again. To Mr. Norgate’s unusual sites I could add some very 
# A Flamborough cliff climber told me that be had taken fourteen red 
Guillemots’ eggs in seven consecutive, or nearly consecutive, years from the 
same rock, probably all laid by one bird (cf. Kearton’s ‘ Nature and a Camera,’ 
p. IOC). • 
