212 
NATURE NOTES 
That dormice, in common with the lower animals, are not mere automata. 
That dormice, like most, if not all, animals, have a language of their own ; 
and are able to communicate their wants and wishes to each other. 
That Mr. Hussey’s two dormice exhibited a considerable amount of common 
sense and business capacity. 
Edmund Thos. Daubeny. 
564 . Plover. — In the list of birds in No. 555 there is a mistake. Green 
plover are about here in “ vast flocks ” and not Norfolk plover. We have three 
or four pair of these latter close by, which I often hear uttering their weird cry 
in the twilight of a summer’s evening. 
Edmund Thos. Daubeny. 
565 . The Cuckoo. — As it was not my good fortune to be shown the 
“ cuckoo’s three eggs in the same nest,” I did my little best before com- 
municating No. 533 to Nature Notes, by cross-questioning my informant, an 
intelligent gardener, twice. This man often puts me on to objects of interest. 
His information was confirmed by the head of the house. 
The lady writer of No. 348, who heard the cuckoo on August 26, knocks my 
date of July 15 into the traditional cocked hat. Mine is the latest date in 
observations carried over many years, and was confirmed by the unmistakable 
gurgling note. Small boys have a way of imitating, with no slight success, the 
cry from which the cuckoo derives its name ; but the gurgling note defies 
imitation in boy, bird, or beast. 
Ed.mund Thos. Daubeny. 
566 . In reply to Mr. Hasiie (p. 194) I beg to write as follows : My dictionary 
also is by Ainsworth, but it is “abridged for the use of schools,’’ so this, no 
doubt, accounts for its only giving one meaning for cucnlus. I have since looked 
up Dr. Murray’s magnificent work now appearing, and find that iuculus certainly 
does mean a cuckoo primarily, but the origin of the termination lus is not eluci- 
dated yet, except that the Sanskrit word appears to be kdkilas, which seems to 
give a clue. Mr. Hastie’s explanation misses the point, because even if cucu 
were impossible, as he implies — which it is not, or there would be no such word 
as genu (knee), not to mention others ending in u in the nominative C 3 .se —atctls 
would have been quite sufficient to convey the idea of the bird’s cry, and, 
curiously enough, this very word is given by Dr. Murray as late Latin for 
“cuckoo.” Mr. Hastie has misunderstood my reference to the rendering of the 
bird’s cry in English. I was not speaking of the syllables, but of the vowel 
sounds— a very different thing ; the word “yes,” for instance, has a short vowel, 
but it can be drawn out into a very long syllable indeed. In this sense I agree 
that both syllables of the bird’s cry are short, and I should like to revise my 
phonetic rendering of it, as given on page 173. Neither the “c” nor the “k ” 
sounds in the cry, which may be rendered thu«, ; the first 00 being 
sounded as in good, as usually pronounced by an Englishman, and the second 00 
3 S in rool ; the (g) being inserted to suggest the throatiness so characteristic of 
the cry and so difficult to imitate. Finally, the first syllable is the accented one, 
and the interval between the two notes may be anything from a full tone to 
a major fifth, the lengthening proceeding with the season, broadly speaking, 
but any one bird may vary the interval in two successive calls. 
Hale End, Chingford. C. Nichoi.son, H.E.N.A. 
567 . American Weed and Wild Fowl. — It has long puzzled me to 
get at the reason for the great decrease of wild fowl hereabouts in the last few 
years. Narford Lake once abounded with them. Now, in spile of being as safe 
a .sanctuary as ever, it is almost deserted. The dying of the “ American Weed ” 
(Anacharis alsuiastrum) is most probably the cause. The history of this 
“ submerged acpiatic,” as far as its introduction into this country is concerned, is 
“ unknown.” In my day at Oxford, more than forty years ago, it was said that a 
relative of mine, the late Dr. Daubeny, the well-known Professor of Botany, and 
h'ellow of Magdalen College, who lived at the Botanical Gardens, Oxford, when 
I was an undergiaduate, kept some of this terrible weed in tubs in the gardens 
there. These samples of his were believed to have escaped or to have been 
thrown into the Cherwell, and thence to have spread all over the country. In 
