May — The Cuckoo. 147 



themselves respectably in life ; but it is difficult to feel 

 any such sentiment towards the cuckoo when we hear 

 the two notes of his monotonous ditty, and see him 

 pass from grove to grove with his silently gliding flight. 

 But if the cuckoo is not a respectable personage, since 

 he will neither build his own house nor bring up his 

 own offspring, he has an advantage in common with cer- 

 tain celebrities in literature and art ; which is, that every- 

 body knows his voice. It requires considerable sylvan 

 experience to distinguish some birds by their voices, 

 and it is only the most observant naturalists who can 

 recognize each of them with certainty ; but the citizen, 

 who rarely visits the country, knows the cuckoo when 

 he hears him. The reader at once perceives the moral 

 which is impending. The cuckoo is like a poet who 

 says but little, and always repeats that little without 

 variety, yet who enjoys a great reputation because his 

 one song is at the same time agreeable, perfectly 

 original, and perfectly inimitable. There have been 

 such poet-cuckoos. 



Nothing is more curious in popular botany and 

 ornithology than the way in which popular beliefs 

 associate together certain birds and plants. Why, for 

 example, is the cuckoo particularly associated with the 

 common arum, which is called the cuckoo-pint ? Is 

 the bird supposed to drink the dew or the rain-water 

 from the spatha ? The explanation of the popular 

 fancy about cuckoo-spit, which is the frothy exudation 

 of a certain larva, was suggested with great probability 

 by Buffon. He thought it possible that a cuckoo might 



