Dear Sir

I have lately procured a work of yours—“(The Origin of Species)” which I am now reading from time to time— I had read the “Vestiges” many years before and my own reflections on the variation of Animals and plants under domestic culture had fully prepared me to welcome your book long before I had the pleasure of seeing it¹

I have also the work of the elder Darwin (Erasmus) entitled “Zoonomia or the laws of Animal Life”, which in the last century anticipated the theory promulged in the Vestiges.²

My present object in writing to you is to correct a statement of Dr Brewer’s in your Book to the purport that the American Cuckoo never uses the nests of other birds for depositing its eggs and rearing its young.³

I remember well when a boy living at home in Illinois, to have seen a case of the kind in my father’s orchard.

My attention was called to it by noticing a great commotion among the birds, and seeing a cuckoo slip away from the nest which was built in the top of an apple tree, I lost no time in climbing up to it.

Guess my surprise on reaching it, at seeing a young Cuckoo and a young Jay bird crouched in the nest side by side.

It was a nest of the Blue Jay—Garrulus cristatus. The young cuckoo was about twice the size of the Jay, and looked as though he had chiefly monopolized the food from both parents.⁴

It was nearly full feathered when I discovered it, and seemed to shrink from me as though he felt conscious of the essential meanness of his position. To my young mind, there was an expression of guilt in its eyes as it crouched itself back into the nest, and I was greatly tempted to throw it out of the nest at once. However, the novelty of the thing prevailed over my sense of justice and I left them both in the nest together until they were gone away—

This is the only instance of the kind I have ever seen, and indeed is the only time I ever saw the young of the Cuckoo at any time

But there could be not the slightest chance of mistake as to the identity of the birds for both the young birds were nearly full feathered especially the young cuckoo—

If to know this fact will be of any service to you I shall feel amply paid for the trouble of writing to you

I am, Sir | very truly yours | S A Merrell