ave been much haunted, indeed infested, if the word may be pardoned,
by cuckoos lately. When I was a child, acute though my observation of
birds and beasts and natural things was, I do not recollect that I ever
saw a cuckoo, though I often tried to stalk one by the ear, following
the sweet siren melody, as it dropped into the expectant silence from a
hedgerow tree; and I remember to have heard the notes of two, that
seemed to answer each other, draw closer each time they called.

But of late I have become familiar with the silvery grey body and the
gliding flight; and this year I have been almost dogged by them. One
flew beside me, as I rode the other day, for nearly a quarter of a mile
along a hedgerow, taking short gliding flights, and settling till I
came up; I could see his shimmering wings and his long barred tail. I
dismounted at last, and he let me watch him for a long time, noting his
small active head, his decent sober coat. Then, when he thought I had
seen enough, he gave one rich bell-like call, with the full force of
his soft throat, and floated off.

He seemed loath to leave me. But what word or gift, I thought, did he
bring with him, false and pretty bird? Do I too desire that others
should hatch my eggs, content with flute-like notes of pleasure?

And yet how strange and marvellous a thing this instinct is; that one
bird, by an absolute and unvarying instinct, should forego the dear
business of nesting and feeding, and should take shrewd advantage of
the labours of other birds! It cannot be a deliberately reasoned or
calculated thing; at least we say that it cannot; and yet not Darwin
and all his followers have brought us any nearer to the method by which
such an instinct is developed and trained, till it has become an
absolute law of the tribe; making it as natural a thing for the cuckoo
to search for a built nest, and to cast away its foundling egg there,
as it is for other birds to welcome and feed the intruder. It seems so
satanically clever a thing to do; such a strange fantastic whim of the
Creator to take thought in originating it! It is this whimsicality,
the _bizarre_ humour in Nature, that puzzles me more than anything in
the world, because it seems like the sport of a child with odd
inconsequent fancies, and with omnipotence behind it all the time. It
seems strange enough to think of the laws that govern the breeding,
nesting, and nurture of birds at all, especially when one consider