290 
COW BUNTING. 
the proprietor is secured, and remains unshaken until incuba- 
tion is fully performed, and the little stranger is able to 
provide for itself. 
The well known practice of the young Cuckoo of Europe 
in turning out all the eggs and young which it feels around it, 
almost as soon as it is hatched, has been detailed in a very 
satisfactory and amusing manner by the amiable Dr Jenner, * j 
who has since risen to immortal celebrity in a much nobler 
pursuit ; and to whose genius and humanity the whole human 
race are under everlasting obligations. In our Cow Bunting, 
though no such habit has been observed, yet still there is 
something mysterious in the disappearance of the nurse’s own 
eggs soon after the foundling is hatched, which happens regu- 
larly before all the rest. From twelve to fourteen days is the 
usual time of incubation with our small birds ; but although I 
cannot exactly fix the precise period requisite for the egg of 
the Cow Bunting, I think I can say almost positively, that it 
is a day or two less than the shortest of the above mentioned 
spaces ! In this singular circumstance, we see a striking 
provision of the Deity ; for did this egg require a day or two 
more, instead of so much less, than those among which it has 
been dropped, the young it contained would in every instance 
most inevitably perish ; and thus, in a few years, the whole 
species must become extinct. On the first appearance of the ' 
young Cow Bunting, the parent being frequently obliged to 
leave the nest to provide sustenance for the foundling, the 
business of incubation is thus necessarily interrupted; the 
disposition to continue it abates ; nature has now given a new 
direction to the zeal of the parent ; and the remaining eggs, 
within a day or two at most, generally disappear. In some 
instances, indeed, they have been found on the ground near, 
or below, the nest ; but this is rarely the case. 
I have never known more than one egg of the Cow Bunting 
dropped in the same nest. This egg is somewhat larger than 
See Philosophical Transactions for 1788, part ii. 
