CHANTICLEER 231 



and, by comparison, brilliant. After once hear- 

 ing this bird I paid little attention to the others, 

 but after each resounding call I counted the 

 seconds until its repetition. It was this bird's 

 note, on this morning, and not the others, which 

 seemed to bring round me that atmosphere of 

 dreams and fancies I exist in at early cockcrow — 

 dreams and memories, sweet or sorrowful, of old 

 scenes and faces, and many eloquent passages in 

 verse and prose, written by men in other and 

 better days, who lived more with nature than we 

 do now. Such a note as this was, perhaps, in 

 Thoreau's mind when he regretted that there 

 were no cocks to cheer him in the solitude of 

 Walden. "I thought," he says, "that it might 

 be worth while keeping a cockerel for his music 

 merely, as a singing bird. The note of this once 

 wild Indian pheasant is certainly the most remark- 

 able of any bird's, and if they could be natural- 

 ized without being domesticated it would soon 

 become the most famous sound in our woods. . . . 

 To walk in a winter morning in a wood where 

 these birds abounded, their native woods, and 

 hear the wild cockerels crow on the trees, clear 

 and shrill for miles over the surrounding coun- 



