of terrorem, to prevent other birds or animals from entering, or whether it be that he finds its silky softness suitable for his young, is uncertain; the fact, however, is notorious *."

Another species of this family, the red-eyed flycatcher (Muscicapa olivacea), which makes an exceedingly ingenious nest, as we have described in a preceding page, has it frequently taken possession of, not only by birds, but by mice; the durable materials of which they are composed rendering them strongly weather-proof t. It is not, indeed, a usual circumstance for quadrupeds to invade in this manner the domiciles of birds, though we have instances of the converse in the jackdaws of Colchester, formerly mentioned, and perhaps in the Coquimbo owl. Quadrupeds, however, among themselves, not unfrequently take possession of the burrows of others which they can master. We could not suppose that a rabbit would ever be silly enough to invade a foxearth in order to save himself the labour of digging; but we know of an instance in which an extensive warren was nearly routed out by an invading colony of rats. It is mentioned in the earliest records of Scotland, that there are no rats in the district of Buchan; and old Hector Boëthius adds, "als sone as thay are brocht there thay diet;" a circumstance likewise asserted in a recent history of Morayshire §. The adjacent county of Kincardine, however, seems very congenial to them. A foreign vessel was several years ago wrecked upon the coast, where a populous rabbit-warren extended for several miles, and a number of large lead-coloured rats (the species not ascertained) swam ashore from the wreck, and fled for

* Wilson, Amer. Ornith., ii. 75. + Wilson, ut supra, ii. 56. Bellenden's Transl. of Boëce's Cronikilis, Cosmographie

Ca. iiii.

§ Shaw's Morayshire, page 160, edit. Edin. 1775.

shelter to the nearest rabbit-burrows, from which they soon drove the legitimate possessors. Here they throve and multiplied so fast, that in a short time they far out-numbered the rabbits, upon whose young they committed so much depredation, that it was found necessary by the lord of the manor to give orders (more easily issued than executed) for their destruction. We are not aware whether this foreign colony of rats was thereby exterminated, or now maintains its ground*.

* J. R.

CHAPTER XVIII.

PARASITE BIRDS, CONTINUED.—THE CUCKOO. THE COW-BUNTING.

A CONSIDERABLE number of birds, as we have just seen, save themselves the labour of constructing a nest, by taking possession of one built by some more industrious pair; but, in these cases, the intruders always hatch their own eggs and nurse their own young. We have now, however, to give the singular history of more than one species, which take no trouble at all with their offspring, except in finding a suitable nest in which their eggs may be deposited. It is very common, in the poultry-yard, to see a brood of ducklings nursed by a hen; a practice which was known to the ancients: "It is sport alone," says Pliny, "to see the maner of a hen that hath sitten vpon ducks egs and hatched them, how at first she will wonder to haue a teem of ducklings about her, and not acknowledge them for her owne; but soone after shee will clucke and call this doubtfull brood to her very carefully and diligently: but at the last, when she perceives them, according to their kind, to take the water and swim, how she will mourn and lament about the fish-poole, that it would pitty ones heart to see them what moane they will make *" This, however, is an artificial process; and no one, we believe, ever knew a female duck, of her own accord, select the nest of a hen to deposit her eggs, and there abandon them to be hatched by a foster-mother.

* Holland's Plinie, i. 299.

fanciful descriptions to be met with in the works of the ancient Fathers, who, as Mariana, the Spanish historian, remarks, considered its alleged appearance, in the reign of Tiberius, as a prognostic of the Resurrection, because it revives out of its own ashes. The following will, we think, satisfy the curious in this respect:

"St. Ambrose, in Exameron, saith, of the humour or ashes of phoenix ariseth a new bird and wexeth, and, in space of time, he is clothed with feathers and wings, and restored into the kind of a bird, and is the most fairest bird that is, most like to the peacock in feathers, and loveth wilderness, and gathereth his meat of clean grains and fruits, Alanus speaketh of this bird and saith, that when the highest bishop Onyas had builded a temple in the city of Heliopoly in Egypt to the likeness of the temple of Jerusalem, and the first day of Easter, when he had gathered much sweet-smelling wood, and set it on fire upon the altar, to offer sacrifice to all men's sight; such a bird came suddenly, and fell into the middle of the fire, and was brent anon to ashes in the fire of the sacrifice; and the ashes abode there, and was besely kept and saved by the commandment of the priest: and, within three days of these ashes, was bred a little worm, that took the shape of a bird at the last, and flew into the wilderness*"

This account of a worm being generated out of the ashes of a sacrifice and afterwards becoming a bird, is precisely similar to the directions given by Virgil and Columella for the generation of bees from dead carcases, which originated in an imperfect knowledge of the natural history of insects+; while

* Bartholomew Glantville, de Propriet. Rerum, translated by Trevisa, fol. clxx. Black letter, Wynkyn de Worde, London, 1498.

+ This may be seen explained at length in 'Insect Transforma, tions', pp. 1-10.

that the bird in question was not a night-jar, but a cuckoo, for which it may be readily mistaken, even by naturalists of considerable experience, as a young cuckoo is so unlike the full-grown bird that it has led to many mistakes. Bloch, as well as Professor Sanders †, has even mistaken the egg, and Sepp, who is usually so accurate in the most minute particulars, has figured the large oval, white marbled with brown, egg of the night-jar‡ for that of the cuckoo, which is always small, rounded, and greenish, yellowish, blueish, or greyish-white, and always dotted (not marbled) with olive or ash-colour, being about the size of a house-sparrow's, and very like it in colour and markings, while the night-jar's egg is larger than a blackbird's §. The young of the night-jar does not differ from the full-grown bird, but the cuckoo does not attain its mature plumage till the third year, and, instead of the greyish lead-blue of the old birds, is brown, with numerous spots and cross streaks of a reddish rust colour, very similar to the markings of the night-jar. The two birds, when full-grown, are also precisely of the same size, namely, ten inches and a half in length ||.

"As the young of the cuckoo," says Colonel Montagu, "differs so materially in the first years of plumage from the adult, it may not be improper to give a description for the information of those who may wish to know the distinction. The irides are greyish, the whole upper part of the plumage is a mixture of dusky black and ferruginous in transverse bars, except the forehead and a patch on the back of the head, which is white, and the tips of the scapulars

Besch. der Berlin. Gesell. iv. tab. 18. fig. 1. † Naturf. xiv. s. 49. Sepp, Nederland. Vogel. ii. 117. § Latham, General History of Birds, iii. 261. Temminck, Manuel d'Ornith. i. pp. 382-432.