ed appearance.

Dab-chicks, moor-hens, and coots fly erect, with their legs hanging down, and hardly make any despatch; the reason is plain, their wings are placed too forward out of the true centre of gravity, as the legs of auks and divers are situated too backward.

LETTER XXXIX.

Selborne, Sept. 9, 1778. DEAR SIR, FROM the motion of birds, the transition is natural enough to their notes and language, of which I shall say something. Not that I would pretend to understand their language like the vizier, who, by the recital of a conversation which passed between two owls, reclaimed a sultan,* before delighting in conquest and devastation; but I would be thought only to mean that many of the winged tribes have various sounds and voices adapted to express their various passions, wants, and feelings, such as anger, fear, love, hatred, hunger, and the like. All species are not equally eloquent; some are copious and fluent, as it were, in their utter. ance, while others are confined to a few important sounds ; no bird, like the fish 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 di

* See Spectator, vol. vii., No. 512.

versified, 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 mates: they use also a quick call and a 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 sound of a crow is strange and ridiculous; rooks, in the hatching season, attempt sometimes, in the gayety 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 a 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 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; as cranes, wild geese, wild ducks, and the like; their perpetual clamour prevents them from dispersing and losing their com panions.

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 trumpėt-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 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 the hen 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 announ. ces the enemy with a little inward moan, and watches him with a 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 hens 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 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 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 affectionate 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 brood hens. 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.*

* Many creatures are endowed with a ready discernment to see what will turn to their own advantage and emolument, and often discover more sagacity than would be expected. Thus my neighbour's poultry watch for wagons loaded with wheat, and, running after them, pick up a number of grains which are shaken from the sheaves by the agitation of the carriages. Thus, when my brother used to take down his gun to shoot sparrows, his cats would run out before him, to be ready to catch up the birds as they fell.

The earnest and early propensity of the gallina to roost on high is very observable, and discovers a strong dread impressed on their spirits respecting vermin that may annoy them on the ground during the hours of darkness. Hence poultry, if left to themselves and not housed, will perch, the winter through, on yew-trees and fir-trees; and turkeys and guinea-fowls, heavy as they are, get up into apple-trees; pheasants also, in woods, sleep on trees to avoid foxes; while peafowls climb to the tops of the highest trees round their owner's house for security, let the weather be ever so cold or blowing. Partridges, it is true, roost on the ground, not having the faculty of perching; but then the same fear prevails in their minds; for, through apprehensions from polecats and stoats, they never trust themselves to coverts, but nestle together in the midst of large fields, far removed from hedges and coppices, which they love to haunt in the day, and where at that season they can skulk more secure from the ravages of rapacious birds.

As to ducks and geese, their awkward splay web feet forbid