receive intelligently, and there's the difference.
His information goes no further than his unaided
experience, and therefore it is slight and
primitive and is, moreover, liable to be largely mixed
with error from bad education and defect of
intellect."

"But," said I, "there is much of the
ploughboy's ignorance among those who have the
accumulated knowledge of the centuries within
their reach. People who ought to be sensible
have superstitions about birds. Only the other
day I took up the Popular Antiquities, and met
with a strange story of a certain young
gentleman, a Mr. Draper, an intimate friend of the
author's, who, it was stated, about five or six
years previously, in the flower of his age,
observed, on a sudden, one or two ravens in his
chamber, which had been quarrelling upon his
chimney, and had tumbled down into his
apartment. Such an awful visitation was at once
regarded by him as an omen of his death— and
the account goes on to add, so it was, for he
died shortly after."

"Yes," said the Reverend Jackdaw, putting
his head on one side thoughtfully, "it is very
remarkable how great a power the so-called
ominous birds have exercised over the
superstitions of mankind. Probably the very blind
belief in such an omen brought about its
accomplishment. But the story is exactly paralleled
by what is said to have occurred in the last days
of Cicero. For when flying from the Triumviri
and the emissaries of his arch-enemy, Marc
Antony, he was warned by ravens that his end
was near, and so indeed it was. In this case,
however, the orator was in no little danger
already from the malignity of his pursuers. But
when Alexander the Great left Ecbatana for
Babylon, it does not appear that there was any
overt danger in the proceeding; but the ravens
seemed to know better, and portended his death,
which I think most probably followed an attack
of delirium tremens, shortly after."

"Certainly," I said, "ravens are black and
portentous-looking birds, and I hardly wonder
that they should have given rise to superstitious
fears."

"Ah! but did you ever hear one croak? It
was that which chiefly caused them to be so
dreaded. The ancients thought that the worst
omens were given by them, and that they
understood their own predictions. Allian calls them
the companions of Apollo, and Aristotle tells a
story to the effect that when the hired soldiers
of Medias perished in Pharsalia, Athens and
the Peloponnesus were deserted by ravens,
as if (he adds) they had some means of
communicating with each other. Pliny expressly
states that their ominousness arose from the
horrible character of their croak, which sounded
like the agony of a man choaking."

At this moment we were brought to a stand
in the green lane by the well-known cry of
the cuckoo, sounding very near to us. It
was the first time that either of us had heard
it that spring, and my friend was evidently
pleased.

"Ah," said he, "Shakespeare says in Love's
Labour Lost,

      Cuckoo, cuckoo, O word of fear!

but I must say I have not heard a more
agreeable note this spring. Not, however,
that he was the only person who made cuckoo a
bad word."

"Indeed, who else has done so then?"

"Well, Plautus, for example, used it for
simpleton, or blockhead, and when he said
'cuckoo!' it was pretty nearly equivalent to
'you lazy lubbers.'"

"I wonder why the poor cuckoo should have
got such a bad character; I thought he was a
favourite with most people as a harbinger of
spring?"

"Very true, but I dare say you know how
his domestic concerns are conducted. In the
first place, he is a vagabond without any settled
place of abode. That he makes no nest, but
leaves his wife to deposit her egg in some other
nursery, was as well known to the ancients as to
us, and the reasons they gave for this behaviour
did not compliment the cuckoo. Thus Aristotle
observes that the cuckoo acts prudently in so
depositing her eggs, for it is conscious of its
own timidity, and that it cannot defend its
young, and therefore places them under the
protection of another bird, in order that they
may be preserved. He goes on to say that the
bird is very cowardly, and when it is pecked at
by smaller birds, it flies away from them."

"I have heard," I said, "of hawks being so
treated, and mobbed by small birds, but had not
heard it of the cuckoo."

"Yes," said Jackdaw, "and if you ask yonder
bumpkin, he will tell you that the cuckoo
changes into a hawk. Not that there is
anything new or even modern in this notion
either, for Aristotle tells us, that in his day
the cuckoo was said by some persons to be
changed into a hawk, because the hawk, which
it resembles, disappears when the cuckoo
comes— a reason, by the way, which would
rather make one suppose that the hawk was
changed into the cuckoo. Indeed, he adds,
very few hawks of any sort can be seen at the
time of year when the cuckoo is singing. Then,
after pointing out the distinctions in appearance
between a hawk and a cuckoo, he explains that
the error came of the fact that the size and
manner of flight of the cuckoo is like that of
the smallest kind of hawk, which generally
disappears during the season in which cuckoos are
seen. Indeed, to an untrained eye, the cuckoo
is very much like the female sparrow-hawk."

"Perhaps, then," I observed, "the small birds
also mistake the cuckoo for a hawk, and mob it
accordingly. You recollect the owl we saw
followed in that way one afternoon. The bird
seemed to be driven wild by them."

"Yes I do," replied my friend; "and
Aristotle had noticed that too, for he says that
during the day, other birds fly round the owl,
which is called 'astonishing it;' and as they
fly round it, they pluck off its feathers. It