BLACK. BILLED CUCKOO 



Cuckoo does that to perfection, and he has been cele- 

 brated most thoroughly by the musician, the poet, and 

 the Swiss manufacturer of clocks. Long years ago 

 (1832) an Englishman, William Gardiner, wrote: "The 

 plough-boy bids him welcome in the early morn. Borne 

 by fragrant gales, he leaves his distant home, for our 

 sunny spots the coppice and the mead. Children mark 

 his well-known song, crying 



Cuc-koo. 



One of th3 most beautiful poems in the English Ian 

 guage is that by John Logan, To the Cuckoo, written 

 somewhere about 1775, and beginning : 



" Hail, beauteous stranger of the grove I 



Thou messenger of spring ! 

 Now heaven repairs thy rural seat, 

 And woods thy welcome sing." 



And he does not forget the natural imitativeness of the 

 child, for he continues : 



" The school-boy wandering through the wood 



To pull the primrose gay, 

 Starts, the new voice of spring to hear, 

 And imitates thy lay." 



Nor does the greatest of all musicians, the immortal 

 Beethoven, fail to recognize the perfection of simplicity 

 in the Cuckoo's song, for near the close of " The scene 

 by the brook " in the Pastoral Symphony he introduces 

 the two familiar notes along with the trill of the Night- 

 ingale and the call of the European Quail, thus : 



etc. 



