The swallow and the cuckoo are generally hailed as harbingers of spring and summer, but, perhaps, many of our readers are not aware that it is only lucky to hear the cuckoo, for the first time in the season, upon soft ground in contradistinction to hard roads, and with money in the pocket, which the youngster is sagely advised to be sure then to turn over.

" Summer is a-coming in, Loud sing cuckoo, Groweth seed and bloometh mead, And springeth the wood now.

*** Asked to describe the cuckoo the other day, a small boy said it was the bird which put its eggs out to be laid by another bird.

These take a variety of formssuch as "All the discomforts of home," "Beware of mumps," "We have lost our worm cards," "Serious lining-shortage"but the purpose of each is to discourage the Cuckoo from depositing an egg where it is not wanted.

Before ascending the hill we crossed a flat clothed with rich grass, out of which we flushed several Pheasant-cuckoos.

"The fields breathe sweet, the daisies kiss our feet, Young lovers meet, old wives a-sunning sit; In every street these tunes our ears do greet Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-wee, to-witta-woo! Spring, the sweet Spring.

Neither will it be, under the influence of the old methods,not until legislators and politicians give over the business of tampering with the currency,till they give over the vain hope of "hedging the cuckoo," to use Locke's figure,and the principle of FREEDOM be allowed to adjust this, as it has already adjusted equally important matters.

I leave the cuckoos to pay you for what you did."

CUCKOO Mr. Jerdan, editor of the Literary Gazette, in a letter to Mr. Loudon, says, "about fifteen years ago I obtained a cuckoo from the nest of (I think) a hedge sparrow, at Old Brompton, where I then resided.

For myself, I cannot do more than I offered, to place at your disposal 'The Prioress' Tale' already published, 'The Cuckoo and the Nightingale', 'The Manciple's Tale', and I rather think (but I cannot just now find it) a small portion of the 'Troilus and Cressida'.

"The first cuckoo clock, as you are doubtless aware, sir"he was always scrupulous to assume knowledge on the part of his hearer, no matter how abstruse or technical the subject; it was a phase of his inherent courtesy"was intended to represent not the cuckoo, but the blackbird.

Whilst waiting the tide, the note of a bird resembling the cuckoo broke the deep stillness that prevailed.

I saw half-a-dozen cuckoos, gliding silvery grey and beating the hedges for nests.

Virginia, who had seen them half an hour before, tousled and dirty, and had been arrayed against them in more than one hot quarrel where they had been anything but chivalrous, let slip a faintly whistled "cuckoo!"

I placed the weaker and smaller of my birds in portable cages, and then commenced my experiment by taking out a strong-winged cuckoo and throwing him downwards over the precipice.

But the folk-lore origin of "Moonraker" is said by the Rev. J.E. Field to belong to a very early period, probably before the day of the Saxon and to be contemporaneous with the "Cuckoo Penners" of Somerset, who captured a young cuckoo and built a high hedge round it; there they fed it until its wings had grown, when it quietly flew away, much to the astonished chagrin of the yokels.

Inside a German clock; Inside a wooden clock she cowers And has to tell the proper hours "Cuckoo," she cries, "cuckoo, cuckoo,

FIRST OWL Silently cleave the blue air THE CUCKOO Cuckoo!