Sometimes he is a positive blackguard. One year (1914) I found a cuckoo’s egg in a tiny nest of a common wren. When hatched, and only after much difficulty, he hoisted out all his companions, or squashed them, until he broke the nest (round like a ball, and with the hole about an inch or so in diameter in the side) and squatted insolently on top of it. The wrens, with their upright, barred little tails ever jerking with pride, fed him incessantly. The female worked so hard, and the cuckoo was so greedy, that eventually the top of her head was devoid of all feathers, and made quite raw by the beak of her wonder-child. But she was very brave, and was apparently quite indifferent to the risk she ran of one day disappearing altogether. I have often wondered if cuckoos have the power of projecting into other birds the maternal love, or instinct, that is so obviously deficient in themselves. This seems to be the logical conclusion to draw, even if it be incomprehensible to the man who in human life thinks in terms of matter and the individual, instead of the spirit and the species. _1916._ DAYS OF AUTUMN One morning in the hollows of the meadow land below the wood lay a silver mist. The sun sweeping upwards in its curve beat this away towards noon, but it was a sign. The fire of autumn was kindled: already the little notched leaves of the hawthorn were tinged with the rust of decay, already a bramble leaf was turning red: soon the flames would mount the mightier trees and fan their pale heat among the willows and ash trees round the lake, lick among the drooping elms and the lacquered oaks, and sweep in abandonment with yawning fire of colour through the old beech forest.