266 NATURAL HISTORY 
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 Srtr,—From the motion of birds, the tran- 
sition is natural enough to their notes and language, 
of which | 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 de- 
lighting 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 pier. 
cing, and, about the season of nidification, much di- 
* See Spectator, vol. vii., No. 512, 
