Excerpt from The Early Life of the Young Cuckoo Although we have accomplished this much, we have not yet proved in any way why the egg is so very small in comparison with the size of the bird, but my friend, Mr. John Craig, to whom I shall shortly refer, has, so far as I am aware, produced the best explanation of this by stating that he con siders it is for the purpose of quick incubation and to allow the egg to be deposited in birds' nests which are smaller than the Cuckoo, and also to allow the Cuckoo to carry the egg in her bill to its destination without breaking it. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.