Excerpt from Our Common Cuckoo: And Other Cuckoos and Parasitical Birds, An Attempt to Reach a True Theory of Them by Comparative Study of Habit and Function, With a Thorough Criticism and Exposure of Darwin's Views and Romanes's Views and Those of Their Folowers

All the district round a little house in the country, to which I removed from London, now getting on to twenty years ago, abounds with cuckoos, as well as with nightingales. I was thus led to pay more attention than I had before done to both these birds and to two others, to which I do not here at all refer. I have lain half-days in woods and coppices to watch and observe as best I could the ways of the cuckoos, and in doing this I could not help seeing other things, and sometimes I have been so struck with what I have seen that I became very anxious to know in, how far other observers had witnessed the same or similar occurrences.

This led me on and on, in a wide track of reading and inquiry, till I found myself launched on a piece of big and rather difficult research about the various different cuckoos in Europe and further afield, and even about other parasitical birds.

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