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 a 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 
