The Story of a Cuckoo'. Egg. Told and Pictured by
Hilda Torras. (Swarthmore Press. 6s. net )—A pair of hedge- sparrows built their nest in the author's garden, close to the house, and a cuckoo deposited her egg in the nest. Miss Terms profited by this happy chance to take a series of photographs which have been coloured by hand and reproduced in this attractive little book. She did not see the cuckoo carrying the egg from the place where it was laid to the sparrow's nest, but the rest of the drama—so familiar and yet so inex- plicable—is clearly illustrated. Miss Torras noted that the sparrows, with other birds, persistently drove the cuckoo away from their empty nest for several days. Yet when the cuckoo's egg was left in the nest, otherwise unoccupied, the sparrows apparently took no notice of it. The photograph of the hen hedge-sparrow feeding the young cuckoo, with her head right down his throat, is remarkable and grotesque.
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