CURLEW. 
123 
seen by Mr. Stafford, belong-ed not to the Cuckoo, but the night-jar 
{Nyctichelidon EuropcBus, Rennie.) — “ With due deference,” says 
Jenner, “to Dr. Darwin, I am inclined to think that the opinion he set 
forth respecting the training of Cuckoos was taken up hastily ; and that 
the birds which his friend saw feeding their nestlings were not Cuckoos, 
but goat-suckers, whose mode of nestling corresponds with the relation 
given, and whose appearance might be mistaken for them by one not 
perfectly conversant with the plumage, and the general appearance of 
Cuckoos when on the wing.” ’ Such mistakes may readily be committed, 
even by naturalists of experience, from the young Cuckoo being so un- 
like the full-grown bird. Block, ^ as well as Sanders,^ and Sepp,‘‘ have 
mistaken the egg, and figured the large oval white marbled with 
brown egg of the night-jar for that of the Cuckoo, which is always 
small, rounded, and greenish, yellowish, bluish, or greyish white, and 
always blotched, not marbled, with olive or ash colour, being about the 
size of a house sparrow’s and very like it in colour, while the night-jar’s 
egg is larger than a blackbird’s.^ The young of the night -jar does not 
differ from the full-grown bird; but the Cuckoo does not attain its 
mature plumage till the third year ; and, instead of the greyish lead 
blue of the old birds, is brown, with numerous spots and cross streaks 
of a reddish rust colour, very similar to the markings of the night-jar. 
The two birds, when full grown, are also precisely of the same size, 
namely, ten inches and a half in length.® The similarity, then, I 
think, is tolerably complete. 
The assertion of Aristotle, that the Cuckoo sometimes builds among 
broken rocks and on high mountains,’ and a similar remark quoted 
from Niphus by Gesner,® are no more to be trusted than his story of 
the redbreast being annually changed^ into a red start; or of the Cuckoo 
itself being nothing but a metamorphosed sparrow-hawk, while, imme- 
diately after this miraculous change, it is so weak, that the kite is so 
obhging as to carry it on its back ! I ! So grossly are the commonest 
facts misrepresented, when not observed with scrupulous accuracy.* 
CUCKOO’S MATE. — A name for the Wryneck. 
CUCULIDiE (Leach.) — * Cuckoos, a group very improperly ar- 
ranged under the Climbers, (^Scansores, Auctores,) as Cuckoos do 
not climb.* 
‘ Jenner, Phil. Trans. 1824, p. 42. ^ Besc, der Berlin, Gess. iv. t. 18. fig. 1. 
^ Naturf. xiv. s. 49. Sepp. Nederl. Vdg. ii. p. 117. 
^ Lath. Gen. Hist, of Birds, iii. p. 261. 
^•Temm. Man. p. 382. 437. ’ Aristotle, Hist. Anim. vi.p. 1. 
® Gesner, de Avibus, iii. ^ Pliny, ALlian, Salerne, &c. 
