116 On certain Peculiarities in the 
in our own country Shakspeare utters the same calumny. In the 
play of Henry IV. he makes that monarch exclaim: 
“¢ And being fed by us, you used us so 
As that ungentle gull, the Cuckoo’s bird 
Useth the sparrow: did oppress our nest: 
Grew by our feeding to so great a bulk 
That even our love durst not come near your sight 
For fear of swallowing: but with nimble wing, 
We were constrained for safety’s sake to fly.” 
And again in King Lear, the fool is made to say 
‘The hedge sparrow fed the Cuckoo so long 
That it had its head bit off by its young.” 
Then again we are told that the fate of an individual for the cur- 
rent year, depends on the direction in which he first hears the ery 
of the Cuckoo in the spring: if it proceeds from the north, for 
instance, it is a lucky omen; but if from the south, it portends 
death.1 And again it is universally considered unlucky to be 
without money in your pocket, on first hearing the welcome notes 
of this bird.” 
These are but samples of the many superstitions current in our 
day, and in our own county with regard to the Cuckoo:* and it is 
with the hope of substituting in their stead, the very interesting 
and peculiar economy of its real life-history, that I venture to 
introduce so simple a subject before so learned a society. 
And then again it so happens that I have for the last year or 
two given more attention than usual to the Cuckoo, by reason of a 
[! Lloyds Scandinavian Adventures vol ii. p. 347.] 
2 Naturalist for 1852, p. 841. 
3 As the story of hedging in the Cuckoo, and so securing the permanence of 
spring, has been attempted to be affiliated on the moonrakers of Wilts, I must 
in common honesty quote from the yeracious Chronicle entitled, ‘‘ The merry 
tales of the wise men of Gotham,” in which the following anecdote occurs: ‘‘ On 
a time the men of Gotham would have pinned in the Cuckoo, whereby she should 
sing all the year; and in the midst of the town they had a hedge made, round 
in compass, and they had got a Cuckow, and put her into it, and said, ‘‘ Sing 
here, and you shall lack neither meat nor drink all the year,” The Cuckow 
when she perceived herself encompassed within the hedge, flew away. A 
vengeance on her? said the wise men, “we made not our hedge high enough.” 
[Sharpe’s Magazine yol. x. p. 6.] 
——s 
