SUPPOSED HIBERNATION OF CUCKOO 209 



cage, and being aroused by his owner too early in 

 the spring, in the hope that he might herald the 

 summer, fell a victim to this unnecessary interference 

 with his habits. He uttered a plaintive double 

 " cuckoo " and then died, like the wild swan, fluting 

 his own death carol. It may be remembered that 

 Gilbert White half believed, to the end of his life, 

 in the hibernation of the swallow, and that Thomas 

 Carew, in a graceful poem of two centuries earlier 

 on "May-day" coupled the cuckoo with the swallow 

 in its long winter sleep : 



" But the warm sun thaws the benumbed earth 

 And makes it tender, gives a second birth 

 To the dead swallow, wakes in hollow tree 

 The drowsy cuckoo and the humble bee." 



Both birds, the swallow and the cuckoo, are 

 suggestive of everything that is joyous, and 

 of nothing that is not joyous in Nature, and 

 Stafford Rectory was well off for both. A few 

 words, first, about the cuckoo. You could not come 

 out from either door of the hall, in spring, without 

 hearing him all round you. Long before it was 

 light, he would often begin to " tell his name to all 

 the hills." He often continued to do so, till long 

 after it was dark. He was, in the truest sense of 



the word, "a wandering voice," in the alders by the 



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