kind, is quite mute,* though some are rather silent. The language of birds is very ancient, and like other ancient modes of speech, very elliptical; little is said, but much is meant and understood. + The notes of the eagle kind are shrill and piercing; and about the season of nidification much diversified, as I have been often assured by a curious observer of nature, who long resided at Gibraltar, where eagles abound. The notes of our hawks much resemble those of the king of birds. Owls have very expressive notes; they hoot in a fine vocal sound, much resembling the vox humana, and reducible by a pitch-pipe to a musical key. This note seems to express complacency and rivalry among the males; they use also a quick call and an horrible scream; and can snore and hiss when they mean to menace. Ravens, besides their loud croak, can exert a deep and solemn note that makes the woods to echo ; the amorous sound of a crow is strange and ridiculous; rooks, in the breeding season, attempt sometimes, in the gaiety of their hearts, to sing, but with no great success; the parrot kind have many modulations of voice, as appears by their aptitude to learn human sounds; doves coo in an amorous and mournful manner, and are emblems of despairing lovers; the woodpecker sets up a sort of loud and hearty laugh; the fern-owl, or goat-sucker, from the dusk till daybreak, serenades his mate with the clattering of castanets. All the tuneful passeres express their * Mr John Thomson of Hull says, "Some tench, which I caught in ponds, made a croaking like a frog for a full half hour, whilst in the basket at my shoulder.' It is well known that when the herring is just caught in the net, and brought into the boat, it utters a shrill cry like a mouse. The gurnard grunts or croaks when taken and freed from the hook. - ED. 6 Mr J. Murray says, "I once heard the cuckoo's note at midnight. This occurred some years ago, as I was coming from Charleton to Douglas, in the Isle of Man. It was moonlight, and I enjoyed a delightful walk en solitaire, my reveries being frequently interrupted by this interesting note, unusual, if I mistake not, for the witching hour." Mr W. H. White says, "During the summer of 1830, the days were wet and chilly, and the nights clear and calm, so that the night was in fact more pleasant than the day; so much so, that I frequently went out after supper, and as frequently heard the cuckoo and the nightingale from ten till eleven o'clock; but on two succeeding evenings, the 4th and 5th of June, the moon being about full, and shining with unclouded majesty,' I heard, about thewitching hour of night, both the cuckoo and the nightingale; and on the 9th was highly gratified in hearing a trio, with all the native melody of the grove, performed by the cuckoo, the nightingale, and the sedge-warbler, a little after midnight."-ED. LANGUAGE OF FOWLS. 225 complacency by sweet modulations, and a variety of melody. The swallow, as has been observed in a former letter, by a shrill alarm, bespeaks the attention of the other hirundines, and bids them be aware that the hawk is at hand.* Aquatic and gregarious birds, especially the nocturnal, that shift their quarters in the dark, are very noisy and loquacious, wild-geese, wild-ducks, and the like their perpetual clamour prevents them from dispersing and losing their companions. as cranes, In so extensive a subject, sketches and outlines are as much as can be expected; for it would be endless to instance in all the infinite variety of the feathered nation. We shall, therefore, confine the remainder of this letter to the few domestic fowls of our yards, which are most known, and, therefore, best understood. And first, the peacock, with his gorgeous train, demands our attention; but, like most of the gaudy birds, his notes are grating and shocking to the ear: the yelling of cats, and the braying of an ass, are not more disgustful. The voice of the goose is trumpet-like, and clanking; and once saved the Capitol at Rome, as grave historians assert: the hiss, also, of the gander is formidable, and full of menace, and protective of his young." Among ducks, the sexual distinction of voice is remarkable; for, while the quack of the female is loud and sonorous, the voice of the drake is inward, and harsh, and feeble, and scarce discernible. The cock turkey struts and gobbles to his mistress in a most uncouth manner: he hath also a pert and petulant note when he attacks his adversary. When a hen turkey leads forth her young brood, she keeps a watchful eye; and if a bird of prey appear, though ever so high in the air, the careful mother announces the enemy with a little inward moan, and watches him with a 66 * Syme makes the following judicious remarks upon the songs of birds: "The notes of soft-billed birds are finely toned, mellow, and plaintive; those of the hard-billed species are sprightly, cheerful, and rapid. This difference proceeds from the construction of the larynx ; as a large pipe of an organ produces a deeper and more mellow-toned note than a small pipe; so the trachea of the nightingale, which is wider than that of the canary, sends forth a deeper and more mellow-toned note. Soft-billed birds, also, sing more from the lower part of their throat than the hard-billed species. This, together with the greater width of the larynx of the nightingale and other soft-billed warblers, fully accounts for their soft, round, mellow notes, compared with the shrill, sharp, and clear notes of the canary and other hard-billed songsters. In a comprehensive sense, the complete song of birds includes all the notes they are capable of uttering, and, taken in this sense, it is analogous to the speech of man." ED. P steady and attentive look; but, if he approach, her note becomes earnest and alarming, and her outcries are redoubled. No inhabitants of a yard seem possessed of such a variety of expression, and so copious a language, as common poultry. Take a chicken of four or five days old, and hold it up to a window where there are flies, and it will immediately seize its prey with little twitterings of complacency; but if you tender it a wasp or a bee, at once its note becomes harsh, and expressive of disapprobation and a sense of danger. When a pullet is ready to lay, she intimates the event by a joyous and easy soft note. Of all the occurrences of their life, that of laying seems to be the most important; for no sooner has a hen disburdened herself, than she rushes forth with a clamorous kind of joy, which the cock and the rest of his mistresses immediately adopt. The tumult is not confined to the family concerned, but catches from yard to yard, and spreads to every homestead within hearing, till at last the whole village is in an uproar. As soon as a hen becomes a mother, her new relation demands a new language; she then runs clucking and screaming about, and seems agitated as if possessed. The father of the flock has also a considerable vocabulary: if he finds food, he calls a favourite concubine to partake; and if a bird of prey passes over, with a warning voice, he bids his family beware. The gallant chanticleer has, at command, his amorous phrases, and his terms of defiance. But the sound by which he is best known is his crowing: by this he has been distinguished in all ages as the countryman's clock or larum,as the watchman that proclaims the divisions of the night. Thus the poet elegantly styles him the crested cock, whose clarion sounds The silent hours. A neighbouring gentleman, one summer, had lost most of his chickens by a sparrow-hawk, that came gliding down, between a fagot pile and the end of his house, to the place where the coops stood. The owner, inwardly vexed to see his flock thus diminishing, hung a setting net adroitly between the pile and the house, into which the caitiff dashed, and was entangled. Resentment suggested the law of retaliation; he, therefore, clipped the hawk's wings, cut off his talons, and, fixing a cork on his bill, threw him down among the broodhens. Imagination cannot paint the scene that ensued; the expressions that fear, rage, and revenge inspired, were new, or at least such as had been unnoticed before. The exasperated matrons upbraided-they execrated-they insulted- they triumphed. In a word, they never desisted from buffeting their adversary till they had torn him in a hundred pieces. LETTER LXXXVI. TO THE HON. DAINES BARRINGTON. monstrent Quid tantùm Oceano properent se tingere soles SELBORNE. GENTLEMEN who have outlets might contrive to make ornament subservient to utility; a pleasing eye-trap might also contribute to promote science: an obelisk in a garden or park might be both an embellishment and a heliotrope. Any person that is curious, and enjoys the advantage of a good horizon, might, with little trouble, make two heliotropes, the one for the winter, the other for the summer solstice; and these two erections might be constructed with very little expense; for two pieces of timber frame-work, about ten or twelve feet high, and four feet broad at the base, and close lined with plank, would answer the purpose. The erection for the former should, if possible, be placed within sight of some window in the common sitting parlour; because men, at that dead season of the year, are usually within doors at the close of the day; while that for the latter might be fixed for any given spot in the garden or outlet, whence the owner might contemplate, in a fine summer's evening, the utmost extent that the sun makes to the northward at the season of the longest days. Now nothing would be necessary but to place these two objects with so much exactness, that the westerly limb of the sun, at setting, might but just clear the winter heliotrope to the west of it, on the shortest day, and that the whole disc of the sun, at the longest day, might exactly, at setting, also clear the summer heliotrope to the north of it.* * Mr Mark Watt has invented a very curious and interesting instrument, which he calls the heliastron, or solar compass. Having observed the daily variation of barometers and the magnetic needle, and remarking that a similar series of alternate changes were more or less observable in every instrument capable of indicating a slight alteration of the impressions made on them, and that these diurnal changes bore a proportionate By this simple expedient, it would soon appear, that there is no such thing, strictly speaking, as a solstice; for, from the shortest day, the owner would, every clear evening, see the disc advancing, at its setting, to the westward of the object; and, from the longest day, observe the sun retiring backwards every evening, at its setting, towards the object westward, till, in a few nights, it would set quite behind it, and so by degrees to the west of it; for when the sun comes near the summer solstice, the whole disc of it would at first set behind the object: after a time, the northern limb would first appear, and so every night gradually more, till at length the whole diameter would set northward of it for about three nights; but, on the middle night of the three, sensibly more remote than the former or following. When beginning its recess from the summer tropic, it would continue more and more to be hidden every night, till at length it would descend quite behind the object again; and so nightly more and more to the westward. relation to the latitude in which the instruments were placed, or to the degrees of solar influence that might exist in the regions in which they were used, and of which they would partake; he also noticed, in coincidence with these movements, the daily expansion and contraction of the petals and leaves of most plants, and that the different species of the heliotropium and chrysanthemum, turned their corollæ round toward the sun for many hours during the day. Hence he concluded that an instrument might be constructed upon principles nearly similar to the laws which regulate these motions in plants. This instrument he formed of a circular ring of cork, three inches in diameter. Into this is fixed twenty-five needles fully impregnated with the magnetic fluid, and these are placed at equal distances round the circumference of the circle, with their north and south poles placed outwards alternately. This circle is affixed to a light slip of wood, five inches long, and one-fourth of an inch broad, by a piece of copper wire, of a semicircular form, the extremities of which are passed through the opposite sides of the cork's circle; and the slip of wood attached to the centre of the wire. Into the centre of the bar is fixed an agate cup; and the whole traverses like a compass needle upon a fine steel point, the bar of wood being equipoised by a small weight at the end of it, equivalent to the weight of the needles. This instrument, when placed with a disc of purple velvet across the needles, in the sun's rays, continued to revolve nearly the whole day, moving always in the direction from east to west by south, in the course of the sun's apparent motion. It moves forty or fifty degrees to the light of a single candle held close to the side of the circle. A piece of clear amber, formed into a convex lens, if fixed into a circle of cork, and suspended by a fine hair or filament, under a glass cover, will also be arrested by the incidence of the solar rays, and will continue to present its surface to the sun, if unclouded, as long as he is invisible above the horizon. It is, perhaps, not generally known, that the conducting power of living plants, in favouring the rapid distribution of electricity, has been reckoned three millions of times greater than that of water. - ED. |