526 THE COMMON CUCKOO. 



fables regarding natural history — leaving aside creeds and those 

 connected with religion. The ancient Greeks knew that the 

 cuckoo left their sunny shores for the still warmer climate of 

 Africa about the same time as the turtle-dove, and called it the 

 " turtle-leader." They also believed it changed into a hawk. 

 Aristotle and Pliny both say it changed into a veritable bird of 

 prey. And Pliny (one of the oldest writers on natural history) 

 gravely says — 



" There is another wonderful thing about the cuckoo. In whatever 

 place a man is standing when he hears it first, if a mark be drawn round 

 his right foot and the soil dug up no fleas are born where this is scattered." 



Were this true it would mean an invaluable receipt. When 

 the Westphalian peasant first hears " cuckoo" he rolls on the 

 grass that he may be saved from rheumatism for the rest of the 

 year. To hear it first when you are fasting is considered in 

 many countries a sign of ill luck ; and very widely spread is 

 the belief that if you have silver in your purse when you first hear 

 it you will never want money all year. If this were the case, 

 many besides schoolboys would be on the lookout for the 

 cuckoo, as " money is an idol worshipped in all climates, 

 without a single temple, and by all classes, without, a single 

 hypocrite." In Yorkshire and Derbyshire even yet people 

 believe it is turned into a hawk. In Switzerland the cuckoo of 

 this year will be an eagle next. In Bohemia it is a cuckoo in 

 spring and a hawk the rest of the year, preying on pigeons and 

 fowls. In some parts of Germany it becomes a sparrow-hawk 

 after St John's Day ; and in France it is changed into a hawk 

 about St James' Day, and resumes its former shape in spring 

 when it returns on the kite's back. But the fables about the 

 cuckoo are as endless as unedifying — all, no doubt, sprung from 

 the singularity of putting its small eggs into the nests of such 

 little birds as the meadow pipit and the hedge sparrow, and 

 its young reared by them — birds only 6J long by 9 inches, 

 while the cuckoo is 14 by 23— more than double their size, yet 

 their eggs about the same — the cuckoo's being J 16 long, the 

 pipit's ~ 1G , the rock pipit's being as big as the cuckoo's, while 

 in colour they are also about the same — all being, no doubt, 

 designed by Nature for deception. Some aie light coloured 

 like the pied wagtail's, but on close inspection readily known, 

 being usually marked with black dots. Besides the nests of 

 many small birds, its egg has been got in those of the mavis, 

 blackbird, and red-backed shrike. On the heathy moor which 



