A CRIMINAL BIRD.* Faom the point of view of character,
bird life and habits stand very high. As a community, and a very large one, their morale is almost irreproachable. With a very striking intellectual development they show almost no corresponding instances of mental alienation. Still less do they exhibit those striking traits of degeneration seen in some quadrupeds remarkable for mental powers. Besides the evidence of degeneration shown by some animals which have for ages been domesticated, instances of perverted and even depraved character and habits are common and obvious among wild beasts ; but birds, whose life corresponds in many respects to theirs, exhibit no such tendency. Bad temper and cruelty are perhaps the most obvious signs of mental degeneration in the beasts. The larger monkeys, for instance, become as bad-tempered as a violent man when they grow old, and many in their treatment of other animals are cruel, as we use the word in regard to man. Among
• Our Common Cuckoo, and other Cuckoos and Parasitical Birds. By A. H. Japp, LL.D. London : Thomas Burlehih. [69.)
the carnivorous beasts the cat amuses itself by torturing a mouse, and the weasel tribe kill for sheer love of killing. No such cruelty is seen among eagles or falcons. Fierce as their tempers are, they do not torment other birds which they catch, or kill for killing's sake. Good temper is general among birds. Except the cuckoo, such a thing as an ill-tempered wild bird is unknown. . Nowhere in the race can a temper like that of the Tasmanian devil, or the wild hunt. ing dog, or the Cape buffalo, or the baboon be found. Even those which in spring are thieves and egg robbers, are not inauvais caucheurs at other times. Good temper, and good fellowship in society, a personal affection for each other to which the beasts offer no parallel, industry and independence, intense devotion and foresight in tending their young, with other very human and engaging traits of character, must all be credited to the race of birds.
Among these kindly and simple natures, the cuckoo is a monster. Let there be no mistake on the subject. He unites in his life and character, from the egg to the adult bird, practices and principles to which the whole race of warm-blooded animals offers no parallel. He is an outrage on the moral law of bird life, something so flagrant, and so utterly foreign to the way of thought of these kindly beings, that if he did not exist he would be inconceivable. It is not merely that he is a supplanter and a changeling. His whole nature is so evil that in the world of birds be is an incarnation of the principle of ill,—an em- bodiment of vices which would, if understood or adopted by other birds, put an end to the existence of the race.
The frantic egoism of the young cuckoo is not merely shown in the accounts, now corroborated on all sides, of its evicting, when it is still blind and naked, the other nest- lings. Its foul temper resembles that of a demoniac. It will strike out the eye of the bird which is feeding it, and the mere approach of any other living thing rouses it when a nestling to a frenzy of resentment and offence. Last summer, in a wood at Chislehurst, two young cuckoos were reared by robins in separatemests. When fully fledged and filling the nests they reared up their bloated bodies, and with open and scarlet maw struck furiously and with untiring energy at every living thing which approached. One was • set on the grass and chicken-food thrown round it. As the chickens approached it to pick up the food, it terrified them by its efforts to strike and peck. Recent and careful observation of their ways has added to the list of cuckoo crimes against bird life, some of which would be in- credible were they not proved. Its conception of the rest of the bird world as tools or material to work with is far wider and more complete than was supposed. That it lays eggs in other birds' nests, that the young cuckoos throw out the other nestlings, and are fed by the foster parent, is not the worst. It purposely destroys both the embryos and the young of other birds, not in order to make room directly for its own eggs, but merely to induce them to make another nest and lay fresh eggs among which these can be hatched. The fceticidal methods of the cuckoo mark a point in animal crime which has no parallel. They are not always exhibited in the same form. Sometimes it only breaks and eats the eggs. This it was always accused of doing, but food was supposed to be the object. Now it is known that the cuckoo often merely pierces the eggs with a minute prick of its bill in order to destroy their vitality. It also takes the young birds from nests in which it desires to lay its eggs, and scatters them on the ground, in order to induce the birds to nest again and provide a home for the cuckoo's offspring. Small birds are not so completely deceived as is commonly believed; not unfrequently they do detect the fraud when the cuckoo's egg is laid. But it is contrary to bird nature to turn any egg, or even anything like an egg—such as a round pebble or marble—out of a nest. Respect for the unborn life is too deep an instinct with them. But the cuckoo does not always convert this instinct to its own end successfully. Dr. Japp, in a very full collection of instances, shows that though the birds imposed upon do not throw out the cuckoo's egg, they often "build it up." Either they make a new lining over the intrusive egg, which lining, being a non-conductor, does not allow it to batch, or some- times they build an entirely new neat over it. It is just possible that cuckoos have so long "sponged ' on other lab*
that_these are growing .more suspicions. In one case a reed- warbler built a new lining over one cuckoo's egg, when another was put in. It then built a fresh lining over this also. The American cow-birds—a rowdy and disreputable species of starling, which are regularly parasitic like our cuckoo—are served in the same way by the common tyrant bird, and also by a sparrow. The present writer once found a cuckoo-egg buried tinder a new lining by hedge-sparrows in England. The hedge- sparrows had been in a hurry to find materials, and had used, among other things, pieces of newspaper giving current prices of South African mines.
Evil temper, intense egoism, cruelty, imposture, robbery, and inconstancy—the mental characteristic of the cuckoo— are accompanied by physical imposture, by disguises and tacit frauds of shape and colour. These begin literally ab ovo. It is now certain that the common cuckoo often lays an egg like those in the nest in which it places its own. Some even lay bine eggs to match the hedge-sparrow's, though the usual colour is a dirty white spotted with brown. The same bird, when adult, mimics a hawk ; but when young is a sober brown, for no small bird would dare to go on feeding a young hawk, so the imposture is deferred.
Dr. Japp's collection of facts is very interesting. If we are less struck by the arguments by which he accounts for them it is because they are wanting in conciseness, and not quite courteous in tone to the two eminent naturalists, Charles Darwin and Professor Romanes, who, to quote his heading, are "dealt with" by him. Darwin's explanation is that the cuckoo only lays eggs at intervals of a few days. If it hatched these eggs itself it would have an irregular brood, and be detained longer than suited it before migration. Consequently the cuckoos which first laid eggs in other birds' nests profited thereby, and the survival of these determined the habit. This theory, which is obviously inadequate to explain the facts, was elaborated later by Professor Romanes. It is an attempt to bring the cuckoo into line with the normal coarse of evolution and of the survival of the fittest. Our present knowledge of its ways shows that the cuckoo is, body and soul, entirely abnormal, some- thing foreign alike to the mind and instinct of other birds, a kind of Satan in Eden. In other words, it is an instance, and almost the only instance, of degeneration in the higher animals. It is as distinctly a "criminal type" as any subject of Professor Lombroso. If we suppose a species to have failed in the effort to survive, and to have deteriorated bodily, as our cuckoo has probably, and to have become mentally depraved, as it has certainly, yet not to have failed so completely in the struggle for existence as to have dis- appeared altogether, it might be expected to be found occupying just the position which it does,—namely, that of a species which is full of bad qualities, parasitic, only able to maintain itself as a parasite, and one which would really perish if it stood alone.
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