CUCKOO-BUD. | NATURAL HISTORY. 79 
feathers; and it enters a hole in the earth or hollow trees; 
there in the summer it lays up that on which it lives in 
the winter. They have their own time of coming, and 
are borne upon the wings of kites, because of their short 
and small flight, lest they be tired in the long tracts of 
air and die. From their spittle grasshoppers are produced. 
In the winter it lies languishing and unfeathered, and looks 
like an owl. Hortus Sanitatis, bk, iii. ch. xxxix. 
Ir you mark where your right foot doth stand at the 
first time that you do hear the Cuckoo, and then grave 
or take up the earth under the same,—wheresover the 
same is sprinkled about, there will no fleas breed. And 
I know it hath proved true. 
Lupton, “ A Thousand Notable Things,” bk. iii. § 47. 
WHEN you first see the Cuckoo, mark well where your 
right foot doth stand; for you shall find there an hair, 
which, if it be black, it signifies that you shall have very 
evil luck all that year following. If it be white, then it 
signifies very good luck ; but if it be grey, then indifferent. 
It is certain such a hair hath been found accordingly, but 
what event did follow thereof I am yet uncertain. But 
this was affirmed unto me for a very truth. It was also 
credibly reported to me, that the like hair will be found 
under the right foot at. the first seeing of the swallow, 
after they are come at the spring-time; so that you look 
after the said swallow, as long as you can see her. 
Ibid, bk. x. § 80. 
Cuckoo-bud. 
When daisies pied and violets blue 
And lady smocks all silver white 
And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue 
Do paint the meadows with delight. 
Love’s Lasour’s Lost, v. 2, 906. 
[If the learned Steevens in writing his note on this passage 
had noticed that Shakespeare draws a special distinction between 
the colours of “lady-smocks” and ‘“ Cuckoo-buds,” he would 
not have suggested that Shakespeare might not have been 
sufficiently acquainted with botany to be aware that lady-smocks 
are also called Cuckoo-flowers (which latter word occurs “ Lear,” 
iv. 4,4). ‘“Cuckoo-bud” may be the Ranunculus bulbosus, which 
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