90 Birch I Have Kept. 



(Koo-kook), the Frencli Coucou, etc. This peculiar note is onlj^ 

 Tittered by the male, and is by him seldom rej^eated after the 

 middle of June; his voice then changes, and becomes as harsh 

 and disagreeable as that of a stripling of fourteen. 



A good many years ago I went to live for a short time 

 in the north of Ireland, not far from Belfast, and found that 

 the country round literally swarmed with these birds, Avhose 

 loud and sonorous notes, never monotonous, though consisting 

 of the repetition merely of a single word, resounded from 

 every tree, and struck me as so pleasing, that I became 

 possessed with the desire to rear a young Cuckoo. With this 

 object in view, I spoke to one of the village lads one day, 

 and promised him a shilling if he would find me one, which 

 in a day or two he did, a fine half-grown specimen which 

 he had taken, he said, from the nest of a Yellow-hammer. 

 A shilling seemed a large sum of money to those poor boys, 

 whose fathers worked on the farms for nine shillings a week, 

 and their mothers for five, so that in a short time no less than 

 fourteen young Cuckoos were brought to me by different lads, 

 who thought, no doubt, that they would each receive a similar 

 reward. 



Fancy! fifteen Cuckoos to feed and provide for! I had 

 already found that one was quite as much as I wanted, if 

 not more, eo I declined them all, and can but imagine the 

 end of the others to have been an untimely one. 



After consulting such books as I had by me, I began by 

 feeding my young Cuckoo on raw meat, chopped fine; he 

 took it, of course, as he would anything I had put into his 

 ever-open beak, but he did not seem to thrive upon his 

 changed diet: he got thin, puffed out his feathers, or bristles 

 rather, screamed incessantly, and made an awful mess, and 

 I thought, not regretfully, that he was going to die: but he 

 had no such intention, then at all events. 



Going into the garden of the house where I was staying, 

 I found one day that a large bed of cabbages was infested 



