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COW BUNTING. 
faculties, exactly suited to their pursuits, sufficient to distin- 
guish them from all others ; and forming for them a character 
solely and exclusively their own. This is particularly so 
among the feathered race. If there be any case where these 
characteristic features are not evident, it is owing to our want 
of observation ; to our little intercourse with that particular 
tribe ; or to that contempt for inferior animals, and all their 
habitudes, which is but too general, and which bespeaks a 
morose, unfeeling, and unreflecting mind. These peculiarities 
are often surprising, always instructive where understood, and, 
(as in the subject of our present chapter,) at least amusing, 
and worthy of being farther investigated.* 
The most remarkable trait in the character of this species 
is, the unaccountable practice it has of dropping its eggs into 
the nests of other birds, instead of building and hatching for 
itself ; and thus entirely abandoning its progeny to the care 
and mercy of strangers. More than two thousand years ago, it 
was well known, in those countries where the bird inhabits, that 
* In this curious species, we have another instance of those wonderful pro- 
visions of Nature, which have hitherto baffled the knowledge and perseverance 
of man to discover for what uses they were intended. The only authenticated 
instance of a like circumstance that we are aware of, is in the economy of the 
common Cuckoo of Europe. Some foreign species, which rank as true Cuculi, 
are said to deposit their eggs in the nests of other birds ; but I am not sure 
that the fact is confirmed. With regard to the birds in question, there is little 
common between them, except that both are migratory, and both deposit their 
eggs in the nest of an alien. The Cow Bunting is polygamous ; and I strongly 
suspect that our Cuckoo is the same. In the deposition of the egg, the mode of 
procedure is nearly similar ; great uneasiness, and a sort of fretting, previously, 
with a calm of quiet satisfaction afterwards. In both species we have beau- 
tiful provisions to ensure the non-disturbance of the intruder by its foster 
progeny : in the one, by a greater strength, easily overcoming and driving out 
the natural but more tender young ; in all love of the natural offspring being 
destroyed in the parents, and succeeded by a powerful desire to preserve and rear 
to maturity the usurper of their rights : in the other, where the young would, 
in some instances, be of a like size and strength, and where a combat might 
prove fatal in an opposite direction to the intentions of Providence, all neces- 
sity of contest is at once avoided by the eggs of the Cow Bunting requiring a 
shorter period to hatch than any of the birds chosen as foster parents. — Ed. 
