INTRODUCTION. 
XCIU 
reproduce here In a woodcut. The sketch was accompanied by Mrs. Blackburn’s account of the circum- 
stance as it came under her observation — which is here given from No. 124 of ‘Nature,’ a weekly illustrated 
journal of science. 
“ Several well-known naturalists who have seen my sketch from life of the young Cuckoo ejecting the 
young Pipit (opposite p. 22 of the little versified tale of mine) * have expressed a wish that the details of my 
observations of the scene should be published. I therefore send you the facts, though the sketch itself 
seems to me to be the only important addition I have made to the admirably accurate description given by 
Dr. Jenner in his letter to John Hunter, which is printed in the ‘ Philosophical Transactions ’ for 1788 
(vol. Ixxvlil. pp. 225, 226}, and which I have read with pleasure since putting down my own notes. 
“The nest (which we watched last June, after finding the Cuckoo’s egg in it) was that of the common 
Meadow-Pipit (Titlark, Moss-cheeper), and had two Pipit’s eggs besides that of the Cuckoo. It was below 
a heather bush, on the declivity of a low abrupt bank on a Highland hill-side in Moidart. 
“ At one visit the Pipits were found to be hatched, but not the Cuckoo. At the next visit, which was 
after an interval of forty-eight hours, we found the young Cuckoo alone in the nest, and both the young 
Pipits lying down the bank, about ten inches from the margin of the nest, but quite lively after being 
warmed in the hand. They were replaced in the nest beside of the Cuckoo, which struggled about till it 
got its back under one of them, when it climbed backwards directly up the open side of the nest, and 
hitched the Pipit from its back on to the edge. It then stood quite upright on its legs, which were 
straddled wide apart, with the claws firmly fixed halfway down the inside of the nest, among the interlacing 
fibres of which the nest was woven ; and, stretching its wings apart and backwards, it elbowed the Pipit 
fairly over the margin so far that its struggles took it down the bank instead of back into the nest. 
* ‘The Pipits,’ illustrated by Mrs. Hugh Blackburn. Glasgow : Maclehose, 1872. 
