THE HEDGE-SPARROW AND CUCKOO. 149 



The ingratitude of the young cuckoo, which is said to 

 turn out the young of its foster parent as soon as it is 

 sufficiently strong, has given rise in France to the proverb 

 " Ingrat comme un coucou." 



The word " gull " above mentioned is usually applied 

 to the person " gulled," i.e. beguiled. Here it must either 

 mean the "guller," or it must have a special application to 

 the voracity of the cuckoo, as the sea-gull is supposed to 

 be so called from gulo — onis. 



We gather from Decker's " English Villanies " that for- 

 merly the sharpers termed their gang a warren, and their 

 simple victims rabbit-suckers, or conies. At other times 

 their confederates were called bird-catchers, and their prey 

 gulls ; and hence it was common to say of any person who 

 had been swindled or hoaxed, that he was coney-catched 

 or gulled. 



"Why, 'tis ii gull, a fool!" — Henry V. Act iii. Sc.^6. 



In a subsequent chapter we shall have occasion to refer 

 to various other passages in which the word gull is thus 

 employed. But to return to the cuckoo, and its foster 

 parent the hedge-sparrow : — 



" Why should the worm intrude the maiden bud, 

 Or hateful cuckoos hatch in sparrows' nests ?" — Lucrece. 



The solution of this question is the more puzzling 

 from the fact that this parasitical habit is not common 



