INTRODUCTION. 3 



on hearing a Skylark raining down a flood of delicious melody 

 from far up at heaven's gate, but his joy is no whit greater than 

 his who hears, in the dewy freshness of the early morning, the 

 carol of the Magpie ringing out over an Australian plain. To 

 those who live in countries where the winter is long and bitter, 

 any sign that the genial time of flowers is at hand is very wel- 

 come. All over the countryside the first call of the Cuckoo, 

 spring's harbinger, arouses the keenest delight in expectant lis- 

 teners. This delight is, however, more than mere delight in the 

 bird's song. And to those brought up with it year by year there 

 comes a time when the call of the Cuckoo stirs something deep 

 down below the surface of ordinary emotion. It is the resultant 

 of multitudes of childhood experiences and of associations with 

 song and story. I first heard the Cuckoo in Epping Forest one 

 delicious May evening four years ago. It charmed me, but my 

 delight was almost wholly that of association. All the English 

 poetry I knew was at the back of the bird's song. Here in 



Australia we have no sharply-defined seasons, yet I find myself 

 every spring listening eagerly for the first plaintive, insistent call 

 of the Pallid Cuckoo. For me his song marks another milestone 

 passed. 



Marcus Clarke wrote of the Laughing Jackasses as bursting 

 into "horrible peals of semi-human laughter." But then 

 Marcus Clarke was English-bred, and did not come to Aus- 

 tralia till he was eighteen years old. It makes all the difference 

 in our appreciation of bird or tree or flower to have known 

 it as a boy. I venture to think no latter-day Australian who 

 has grown up with our Kookaburra can have any but the 

 kindliest of feelings for this feathered comedian. For myself, 

 I confess that I find his laughter infectious, and innumerable 

 times he has provoked me into an outburst as hearty and as 

 mirthful as his own. More than half of our pleasure is due 

 to the fact that the bird is 



"The same that in my schoolboy days I listened to." 



and to such a one we can say — 



"I can listen to thee yet, 



Can lie upon the plain v 



And listen, till I do beget 

 That golden time again." 



It is time that we Australians fought against the generally 

 received opinion that the dominant note of our scenery is weird 

 melancholy. This is the note sounded mainly by those who 

 were bred elsewhere, who came to us with other associations 

 and other traditions, and sojourned among us. It will not be 

 the opinion of the native-born when they find appropriate 

 speech. 



"Whence doth the mournful keynote start? 

 From the pure depths of Nature's heart? 

 Or, from the heart of him who sings, 

 And deems his hand upon the strings, 

 Is Nature's own?" 



