A Cuckoo Experiment It has been suggested .that those who
find young cuckoos in .a nest before they have murdered their fellow nestlings should try the experi- ment of removing the youngster to an artificial nest placed near by. Would the foster mother prefer the cuckoo to her own young? The young cuckoo loses after a few days the intense irritability which makes it eject its neighbours and would presumably "consent to a mutual relationship " if that deadly interval could be bridged. This view has been strengthened, I believe, by the discovery (not so great a rarity as is suggested) of two young cuckoos in one .nest. They were hatched at different dates and neither threw out the other. Cuckoos are very numerous this year and must have destroyed many broods of meadow pipits; but in spite of this enemy the pipits remain in large numbers, not least in the North-West where cuckoos, as Wordsworth knew, throng.
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