FAMILY Cuculid2. 
But probably one of the best things that has ever been 
written with the Cuckoo’s song for the theme is the 
nursery melody by Joseph 8. Moorat, an English musi- 
cian, which appears on the opposite page. Theodore 
Marzials says of it: ‘‘ If you want a breath of fresh air 
straight from the heart of the hills, play over * Cuckoo, 
Cherry-tree’ . . . it ’s as good as an hour on the 
moor-side.” But we have not yet gauged the popularity 
of the Cuckoo. Go as far back as the time of Queen 
Elizabeth, and he already appears an acknowledged 
musician, for Shakespeare writes, 
‘‘ The finch, the sparrow, and the lark, 
The plain-song cuckoo gray.” 
The estimate of the great poet is close to the truth, for 
the song, a drop of the minor third, is one of the com- 
es 
monest occurrences in old-time plain-song versicles and 
responses, and was actually introduced by Marbecke 
into the closing sentences of the Lord’s Prayer. 
When one pursues a study of the simple forms of 
melody, it is indeed remarkabie to note how exactly 
similar these are to the songs of the birds. In our 
American Black-billed Cuckoo, we have not only a 
musician capable of giving us an interval of a third or 
fourth, like his English cousin, but one who appreciates 
the value of measured silence such as that which char- 
acterizes the opening bars of Beethoven’s Fifth Sym- 
phony. We also possess a bird of more character too, 
for the female builds her own nest and hatches her own 
eggs, which is more than can be said of her foreign 
’ relative ! 
