SPECIES DISTRIBUTION ABOUT PLYMOUTH. ooze 
schoolboy is a more diligent nest-hunter than are these pretty and 
amusing birds, although it is by no means exclusively on such fare 
that the young are reared, for the species is well-nigh omnivorous. 
Many years ago, I happened to discover an article of their food in 
the following way: A brood of young ones had just quitted the 
nest, when, to my regret, some fell victims to a sportsman’s gun. 
These I had an opportunity of examining, and was greatly sur- 
prised to find the old ones had been feeding them on the small 
semi-transparent galls so common on the leaves and young branches 
of the oak. The jay, in common with the rook, wood-pigeon, and 
_ pheasant, is known to be a devourer of the fruit of this tree—a 
fact to which the name of glandarins, bestowed on it long ago by 
Brisson, points—but I have never met with any statement of its 
eating oak-galls in any ornithological work. Who would have 
supposed the number of jays in a district could have had any 
relation to that of the oak-galls, or that a minute species of cynips 
could have been an instrument in making the king of the forest 
yield them food ! ; 
Our favourite cuckoo has to be considered as one of nature’s agents 
in diminishing the numbers of some of the smaller birds. A young 
cuckoo, directly after it is hatched, turns out the nestlings of the 
foster species to perish. We are lost in wonder that an instinct, 
apparently so cruel, should have been implanted in the species ; 
but on viewing it as one of nature’s plans for preventing the undue 
increase of certain birds, we are able to see it in a somewhat 
different light. The famous Dr. Jenner seems to bave been the 
first to give a detailed account concerning the way in which the 
young cuckoo ejects the newly-hatched nestlings of the foster 
species ; and his statements were, not long after, confirmed by that 
admirable Devon ornithologist Col. Montagu. I can myself give 
the following particulars with reference to the matter: When 
crossing Crownhill Down, on July 9th, 1867, I happened to see a 
meadow pipit, or titlark, as it is commonly called in our neighbour- 
hood, fly up from the common, and I soon found her nest, with a 
newly-hatched cuckoo within it, perfectly bare of feathers, whilst 
on the edge of the nest was a little living pipit quite as young, 
which had evidently been recently turned out of it. I put it back 
into the nest to see how the little cuckoo would act, and it soon 
began to do its utmost to eject it. Two or three times it succeeded 
in lifting it to the rim of the nest, and tried to throw it out; once 
