120 
CUCKOO. 
they depart from us ; but we cannot help doubting-, whether more than 
one lot of eggs is laid during its continuation in this country ; and that 
alone may be a work of time, for the reasons before mentioned. 
If a Cuckoo continued laying each day successively, from the time of 
her excluding the first egg till near the time of migrating, surely a greater 
number of eggs or young of that bird would be found, especially as they 
are so dispersed; but, on the contrary, although we have been anxious to 
procure the eggs or young for several years together, we have not been 
able to succeed ; yet the old birds have been in plenty about us. 
* Should there be no mistake in the fact of the Cuckoo’s egg 
having been found in the nests of wrens, it may well excite a question 
in what manner it was introduced ; for the entrance of any of these 
little nests being in the side, and not more than an inch or an inch and 
a half in diameter either way, it is obviously impossible so large a bird 
as the Cuckoo could get into the nest, which is barely wide enough to 
admit the wren herself. But even if we reject (though we have no 
good reason to do so) the evidence of M. Montbeillard with respect to 
the wrens, we cannot refuse to believe the accuracy of Dr. Jenner, who 
found a Cuckoo’s egg in the nest of a wagtail in a hole under the eave of a 
cottage ; though I think this was rather a singular place for a wagtail to 
build. Nay even leaving these domed nests with a narrow entrance out of 
the question, and taking the nests most usually chosen by the Cuckoo for 
her progeny, we must conclude that she cannot in many instances sit upon 
the nest while depositing her egg. She may indeed, in many instances, 
manage this in the nests of the larks ; and in the wagtail’s when built as it 
usually is, on the ground ; but the case is very different with the hedge- 
sparrow, the green-bird, the linnet, or the white-throat, all of whose 
nests are usually placed in thick thorn-bushes, or among brambles, 
and so closely fenced in therewith, that the school-boy can with diffi- 
culty reach in his hand (which is not one-third the size of a Cuckoo) to 
rob them of their eggs. From these facts, which I have not seen 
placed in this point of view in the works of previous naturalists, I think 
I am fully entitled to infer, that it is physically impossible for the 
Cuckoo to sit upon the nests in question, when she deposits her egg. 
I am sorry however that I cannot offer anything beyond conjecture as 
to the actual manner in which the thing is done ; though Vaillant 
obtained pretty satisfactory evidence, that one at least of the African 
Cuckoos carries the egg in her bill, in order to lay it in nests having a 
narrow side entrance, such as that of the capocier (^Sylvia macroura, 
Latham.) M. Vaillant likewise found an egg supposed to be that of 
another Cuckoo, which he calls edolio, {Cuculus melanoleucos, Tem- 
