Hesiod instructed his rural countrymen that if “it should happen to rain three days in succession when the cuckoo sings among the oak-trees, then late sowing will be as good as early sowing”—doubtless good agricultural counsel. Not more than a century ago English farmers thought it necessary to sow barley when the earliest note of the cuckoo was heard in order to insure a full crop. Mr. Friend[[11]] reasons thus about this: “As the cuckoo only returns to our shores at a certain time, it has been customary to predict from his appearance what kind of season will follow; and farmers have in all ages placed great reliance on omens of weather and crops drawn from this source.... In Berwickshire those oats which are sown after the first of April are called ‘gowk’s’ [cuckoo’s] oats....

Cuckoo oats and wood cock hay

Make a farmer run away.

If the spring is so backward that the oats cannot be sown until the cuckoo is heard, or the autumn so wet that the hay cannot be gathered in until the woodcocks come over, the farmer is sure to suffer great loss.”

So much for these old maxims; and when British or Italian immigrants became colonists in America, and found cuckoos here, they continued the sayings, regardless of difference in climate and other circumstances. Our species are not early migrants in spring, are poor guides for planters, and seem to have no prophetic gift, yet they are rain-birds because their ancestral relatives in India were such 3,000 years ago.

CHAPTER XII
A PRIMITIVE VIEW OF THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES

If anyone should ask you how a particular bird came to be blue or red or streaked, or how it happened that birds in general differ in colors and other features, “each after its kind,” in other words how specific distinctions came about, you, a liberal-minded and well-read person, would undoubtedly answer that each and all “developed” these specific characteristics. You might go on to explain that they resulted from the combined influences of natural and sexual selection, to the latter of which birds are supposed to be especially susceptible, and thereby show yourself a good Darwinist.

But primitive thinkers, like children, are not evolutionists but creationists. They believe that things were made as they are: if so, somebody made them. They are convinced that no person like themselves or any of their acquaintances could do it, so they attribute the feat to some being with superhuman powers. This being is almost always the mythical ancestor, pristine instructor or “culture-hero,” of the nation, tribe or clan to which the thinker belongs; and it is perfectly natural and a matter of course to assume that he had magical functions and supernatural powers. Next, some genius invents a story to fit the case, and as anything is possible to such a being as the hero it is adopted and passed into the tribal history that the elders recount by the evening fire, and that everybody accepts without suspicion or criticism. The Hebrews, for example, said that Adam, their “first man,” “gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; ... and whatsoever Adam called every living creature that was the name thereof.” As to his reasons for giving this name to one creature and another to that, it has been whimsically explained that he called the raccoon that because “it looked like a ‘coon’”—quite as good a reason as the legend requires.

Now the two questions at the beginning of this chapter were, in fact, asked by a great variety of our aboriginal Americans, the red Indians, and undoubtedly by the aborigines of most other countries; but for the present let us stick to North America.

When some bright-witted, inquisitive Iroquois youngster, hearing and seeing many birds on a soft June morning, asked his mother how it happened that they wore such a diversity of plumages, she told him this story: In the beginning the birds were naked, but some of them became ashamed, and cried for coverings. (In those days, of course, birds talked with one another, and even with the wiser sort of men.) They were told that their suits were ready but were a long way off. At last the turkey-buzzard was persuaded to go and get them. He had been a clean bird, but during the long journey had to eat much carrion and filth, hence his present nature. Guided by the gods he reached the store of plumages, and selfishly chose for himself the most beautifully colored dress, but as he found he could not fly in it he was forced to take his present one, which enables him to soar most gracefully. Finally he brought their varied suits to the other birds.