good domestics, they are not adepts in speaking. The savages adorn themselves with their feathers, by drawing them through the cartilage of the nose. Of all game, these birds are most frequent. They make excellent soup, and are very frequently eat in Cayenne. This species, perhaps, more than any other of the feathered race, is subject to epilepsy; a disorder which is more violent and fatal in warm than in temperate climes. The savages pretend to have found out a cure for this disease, which consists in cutting off the extremity of one of the bird's toes, and allowing the blood to flow.

To this disease the parrots that are kept in a domesticated state are more subject than the wild. The abstraction of the female, the superabundance of food, and the consequent excess of blood in the system, seem to be the causes of epilepsy among these birds. [Phil. Trans. Pantolog.

SECTION V.

Woodpecker.

Picus, LINN.

The birds of this genus climb up and down trees in search of insects, which they transfix and draw out from the clefts of the bark by means of the tongue, which is long at the end, barbed, and furnished with a curious apparatus of muscles, for the purpose of throwing it forward with great force. The life of the woodpecker appears therefore to be hardier and less pleasurable than that of most birds. Condemned to this painful toil, he can obtain no food but by boring the bark and hard fibres of trees that inclose it. Thus continually occupied, he enjoys neither relaxation nor rest; and often sleeps in the constrained attitude in which he spent the day. He shares in none of the agreeable sports of the rest of the tenants of the air; he enters into none of their concerts; he utters only savage cries, or plaintive accents, which interrupt the silence of the forest, and express the efforts of a life of fatigue and of pain. The manners of this bird are suited to its condition: its air is disconsolate; the traits of its visage harsh. The dispositions of the woodpecker are wild and savage. He flies from society, even that of his mate; and when forced by the impulse of sexual appetite to seek a companion, he does it without that graceful address, with which this passion animates creatures of more sensibility.

Such are the condition and habits of the woodpecker, Nature, however, amidst her unkindness, has not denied him instruments

suited to his destiny.

His legs are strong and muscular; and the disposition of his toes, of which two are before, and two backward, is fitted for a vigorous adhesion to the trunks of trees where his work lies. His bill, square at the base, but flattened laterally towards the top, like a pair of scissars, is the instrument by which he cuts the trunks of trees, where the insects deposit their eggs. From his bill he darts out his long, round tongue, armed at the top with a short bony substance, like a needle; and with this instrument he stabs and draws out the small worms found in the timber. His nest is constructed of the raspings of the wood, in the cavity which he has dug; and it is from the heart of the tree that the progeny issues, which is destined to creep around and gnaw it down.

The genus comprises fifty-eight species, scattered over the globe, but chiefly inhabitants of America; five or six are natives of own country.

One of the largest is the great black woodpecker, (picus martius), found in Europe generally, as also in Chili; resides chiefly among poplar trees; builds a large and deep nest, and lays from two to three white eggs; feeds principally on bees and ants; from seventeen to eighteen inches long. In the female the hind-head only is red.

These birds strike with such force against the trees which they excavate, that their noise is heard as far as that of a wood-cutter's hatchet. They sometimes make a large cavity in the interior part of a tree, which weakens it so much, that it falls with the first gale of wind and hence they often occasion considerable damage to the proprietors of woods.

The bird frequently employs this cavity for a nest: which it makes large and commodious, which may be judged from the heaps of broken chips, which are seen at the foot of the tree which has been thus hollowed out. Aristotle asserts, that none of the wood. peckers ever alight upon the ground; and it must be admitted, that they are seldom seen there.. In winter, birds of this species regularly disappear; the ants and insects penetrating, in these colder months, into the wood so deeply, that they cannot easily be dug out.

[Pantologia.

SECTION VI.

Cuckoo.

Cuculus. LINN.

THE first appearance of cuckoos in Gloucestershire, the part of England where these observations were made, is about the 17th of April. The song of the male, which is well known, soon proclaims its arrival. The songs of the female, if the peculiar notes of which it is composed may be so called, is widely different, and has been so little attended to, that I believe few are acquainted with it. I know not how to convey a proper idea of it by a comparison with the notes of any other bird; but the cry of the dab.chick bears the nearest resemblance to it.

Unlike the generality of birds, cuckoos do not pair. When a female appears on the wing, she is often attended by two or three males, who seem to be earnestly contending for her favours. From the time of her appearance, till after the middle of summer, nests of birds selected to receive her egg are to be found in great abundance; but like the other migrating birds, she does not begin to lay till some weeks after her arrival. I never could procure an egg till the middle of May, though probably an early.coming cuckoo may produce one sooner*.

The cuckoo makes choice of the nests of a great variety of small birds. I have known its egg entrusted to the care of the hedge-sparrow, the water-wagtail, the titlark, the yellow-hammer, the green-linnet, and the winchat. Among these it generally selects the three former; but shews a much greater partiality to the hedge-sparrow than to any of the rest: therefore, for the purpose of avoiding confusion, this bird only, in the following account, will be considered as the foster-parent of the cuckoo, except in instances which are particularly specified.

The hedge-sparrow commonly takes up four or five days in laying her eggs. During this time, generally after she has laid one or two, the cuckoo contrives to deposit her egg among the rest, leav

* What is meant by an early-coming cuckoo, I shall more fully explain in a paper on the migration of birds, but it may be necessary to mention here, that migrating birds of the same species arrive and depart in succession. Cuckoos, for example, appear in greater numbers on the 2d than on the 1st week of their arrival, and they disappear in the same gradual manner,➡ORIG.

ing the future care of it entirely to the hedge-sparrow. This intrusion often occasions some discomposure; for the old hedge. sparrow at intervals, while she is sitting, not unfrequently throws out some of her own eggs, and sometimes injures them in such a way that they become addle; so that it more frequently happens, that only two or three hedge-sparrow's eggs are hatched with the cuckoo's, than otherwise; but whether this be the case or not, she sits the same length of time as if no foreign egg had been introduced, the cuckoo's egg requiring no longer incubation than her own. However, I have never seen an instance where the hedgesparrow has either thrown out or injured the egg of the cuckoo. When the hedge-sparrow has sat her usual time, and disengaged the young cuckoo and some of her own offspring from the shell*, her young ones, and any of her eggs that remain unhatched, are soon turned out, the young cuckoo remaining possessor of the nest, and sole object of her future care. The young birds are not previously killed, nor are the eggs demolished; but all are left to perish together, either entangled about the bush which contains the nest, or lying on the ground under it.

The early fate of the young hedge-sparrows is a circumstance that has been noticed by others, but attributed to wrong causes. A variety of conjectures have been formed upon it. Some have sup posed the parent cuckoo the author of their destruction; while others, as erroneously, have pronounced them smothered by the disproportioned size of their fellow-nestling. Now the cuckoo's egg being not much larger than the hedge-sparrow's, it necessa rily follows, that at first there can be no great difference in the size of the birds just burst from the shell. Of the fallacy of the former assertion also I was some years ago convinced, by having found that many cuckoo's eggs were hatched in the nests of other birds, after the old cuckoo had disappeared; and by seeing the same fate then attend the nestling sparrows as during the appearance of old cuckoos in this country.

Having found that the old hedge-sparrow commonly throws out some of her own eggs after her nest has received the cuckoo's, and not knowing how she might treat her young ones, if the young cuckoo was deprived of the power of dispossessing them of the nest, I made the following experiment. July 9. A young cuckoo,

The young cuckoo is commonly hatched first.-Orig

that had been hatched by a hedge-sparrow about four hours, was confined in the nest in such a manner that it could not possibly turn out the young hedge-sparrows which were hatched at the same time, though it was almost incessantly making attempts to effect it. The consequence was, the old birds fed the whole alike, and appeared in every respect to pay the same attention to their own young as to the young cuckoo, till the 13th, when the nest was unfortunately plundered.

The smallness of the cuckoo's egg, in proportion to the size of the bird, is a circumstance that hitherto I believe has escaped the notice of the ornithologist. So great is the disproportion, that it is in general smaller than that of the house-sparrow; whereas the difference in the size of the birds is nearly five to one. I have used the term in general, because eggs produced at different times by the same bird vary much in size. I found a cuckoo's egg so light that it weighed only 43 grs., and one so heavy that it weighed 55 grs. The colour of the cuckoo's egg is extremely variable. Some, both in ground and penciling, very much resemble the house-sparrow's; some are indistinctly covered with bran-coloured spots; and others are marked with lines of black, resembling in some measure the eggs of the yellow-hammer.

The circumstance of the young cuckoo's being destined by na. ture to throw out the young hedge-sparrows, seems to account for the parent-cuckoo's dropping her egg in the nests of birds so small as those I have particularized. If she were to do this in the nest of a bird which produced a large egg, and consequently a large nestling, the young cuckoo would probably find an insurmount. able difficulty in solely possessing the nest, as its exertion would be unequal to the labour of turning out the young birds*. Be. sides, though many of the larger birds might have fed the nestling cuckoo very properly, had it been committed to their charge, yet they could not have suffered their own young to have been sacri

* I have known an instance in which a hedge-sparrow sat on a cuckoo's egg and one of her own. Her own egg was hatched five days before the cuckoo's, when the young hedge-sparrow had gained such a superiority in size, that the young cuckoo had not power sufficient to lift it out of the nest till it was two days old, by which time it was grown very considerably. This egg was probably laid by the cuckoo several days after the hedge-sparrow had begun to sit; and even in this case it appears that its presence had created the disurbance before alluded to, as all the hedge-sparrow's eggs were gone except one.