422 
Brewer’s Remarks on 
one, he is compelled to infer that he did not witness the 
other. Mr. Nuttall does not tell us, in so many words, 
that he ever saw the nest of the chipping sparrow. Are 
we thence to infer that he never did see one, but that his 
description of it is “ related at second hand ?” Where 
then will Mr. Ord find the position in question, which if 
he could, find assumed, he would be amply justified in 
pronouncing it untenable ? What naturalist ever assumed 
it? Not Wilson, for he only expresses his ignorance on 
the subject. Not Audubon, for, as far as we can see, he 
leaves the point untouched. And most certainly not Nut- 
tall. We are compelled to think that he has but wasted 
his time in demolishing an imaginary position. 
On the second point I can offer nothing from personal 
observation, either in support of, or in opposition to Mr. 
Ord’s views. In the only instances that have fallen under 
my notice, the eggs of the cow-troopial alone were 
hatched. On this head, the writer of the above paper 
in Loudon modestly observes ; “ The opinion advanced 
by Wilson, and echoed by others, that the cow-bunting is 
invariably the first hatched, is mere conjecture, totally 
unsupported by facts. It must now yield to truth ; al- 
though the sentimental reader will, doubtless, regret that 
the profound reflections on the ‘ wisdom of nature’ will 
lose much of their efficacy or application.” After such 
a preface, we are naturally led to expect that Mr. Ord 
would make good his point, by at least one instance, in 
which the cow-troopial can be proved to have been hatch- 
ed after at least one of the other inmates of the nest. 
What are we to think then, when, although he relates 
many of his observations, to make good his point, from 
not one of them can we infer, with any degree of cer- 
tainty, that the cow-troopial was not, in every instance, 
the Cow Black-Bird. 423 
hatched the first ? I will not detain you with a detail of 
his observations ; their amount is, that in several instances 
he found the parasite and the young of the owner of the 
nest hatched during the same night. But what right has 
he to assume, that the cow-troopial was not batched 
twelve hours before the others? On one occasion, he 
found a nest of the indigo bird, containing one egg of the 
cow-troopial and three legitimate eggs : eleven days after 
he found the egg of the troopial hatched and two of the 
indigo bird’s. The egg-shell of the former, and that of 
one of the latter, remained in the nest. The other had 
been removed. From this Mr. Ord infers that the last 
was the first hatched. This assumption is entirely gratui- 
tous ; and until it be admitted that birds uniformly remove 
their egg-shells within a certain time after the eggs have 
been hatched, (which indeed, Mr. Ord would seem to 
assume, but in proof of which he offers nothing) we must 
beg leave to wait for more satisfactory proof before we 
can declare untenable, a position assumed by Wilson, 
Audubon and Nuttall, sustained by their actual observa- 
tions and proved in every instance to be the fact, when 
the case would admit of proof. All that has yet been 
proved, on the opposite side of the question, is, that the 
eggs of other birds have been hatched during the same 
night as the cow-troopial. 
In pronouncing the third position untenable, Mr. Ord 
is undoubtedly, in part, correct. But that it holds good 
in most instances is still undeniable ; and the few instances 
to the contrary that have been cited, must be regarded as 
but exceptions to a very general rule. Mr. Ord, how- 
ever, has but echoed a fact, in the discovery of which he 
has been anticipated by Nuttall, who speaks of the red- 
eyed vireo “faithfully nursing the foundling along with 
her own brood.” 
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