MR. J. H. GURNEY ON TIIK ECONOMY OF TI1E CUCKOO. 375 
be searching to see if this had been done. It is true there are 
Stoats on the marsh, but the dead nestlings showed no marks of 
teeth. Their relative position, and that of the nest and bush can 
be best shown by a sketch, and accordingly the accompanying 
drawing has been made from my recollections of this rural tragedy 
in bird life by our well-known draughtsman, Mr. Keulemans. 
A quarter of a mile further my son found a Keed Bunting’s nest, 
empty, save for one well-fledged young Bunting, dead and bleeding 
on the edge of the nest. Whether this was Cuckoo’s work or 
Stoat’s we could not tell. Bearing on the same subject, another 
narrative of Cuckoo’s destruction may here be appropriately given 
in the words of the Rev. J. A. Laurence, who, referring to a con- 
versation at a meeting of the Naturalists’ Society, about a Robin’s 
nest which contained a Cuckoo’s egg, and the unusual number of 
six Robin’s eggs besides, writes under date June 4th, 18S9: — 
“I looked at that Robin’s nest on Friday [at Dilham in Norfolk], 
and all the seven eggs were there. 1 looked again on Sunday evening, 
and this was the result : in the nest was a young Cuckoo just born, 
on the slope of the bank were three young Robins, and three eggs, 
turned out of the nest. There were two birds in two of the eggs, 
the third was addled. I replaced two of the young Robins, one of 
which was certainly alive, and I think both were, in the nest with 
the young Cuckoo. Next morning, all were gone but the Cuckoo : 
no trace of the eggs or young Robins was to be found. Now in this 
case the young Cuckoo can have had nothing to do with turning 
the other birds and eggs out of the nest as it was itself helpless, 
and is still.” 
The above narrative by a careful observer indicates that Cuckoos 
do take a very active interest, in one sense, in the welfare of their 
young, unless these Dilham Robins were thrown out by their own 
parents. On this head there is a good deal to be said (vide 
Montagu’s experiment with a Swallow, Orn. Diet. Introduction vl). 
For my part, I think it more probable that the Robins were ousted 
by the old Cuckoo, being chiefly led to this opinion by the narrative 
of a man, a gardener, who being concealed in a pigsty had a 
perfect view of what was going on, and saw from his hiding-place 
an adult Cuckoo take three young Hedge Sparrows, one by one, out 
of a nest, and fly away with them (Zool. 1889, p. 261). Again, 
in ‘Science Gossip’ of May 1st, 1868, will bo found an account 
