LANGUAGE. 183 
across the uprights of an iron railing, and comes on 
the ear so quick and transient that it is impossible 
to catch a view of the bird by trying to follow the 
sound. 
It is ingeniously, and, as we think, correctly re- 
marked by Mr. Knapp, that, ‘‘ as Nature in all her 
ordinations had a fixed design and foreknowledge, 
it may be that each species had a separate voice 
assigned it, that each might continue as created, 
distinct and unmixed; and the very few deviations 
and admixtures that have taken place, considering 
the lapse of time, association, and opportunity, 
united with the prohibition of continuing accidental 
deviations, are very remarkable, and indicate a cause 
and original motive. That some of the notes of 
birds are a language designed to convey a meaning, 
is obvious from the very different sounds uttered by 
these creatures at particular periods; the spring 
voices become changed as summer advances, and 
the requirements of the early season have ceased: 
the summer excitements, monitions, informations, 
are not needed in autumn, and the notes conyeying 
such intelligence are no longer heard. The period- 
ical calls of animals, croaking of frogs, &c., afford 
the same reason for concluding that the sound of 
their voices, by elevation, depression, or modula- 
tion, conveys intelligence equivalent to an uttered 
sentence. The voices of birds seem applicable, 
in most instances, to the immediate necessities of 
their condition; such as the sexual call, the invita- 
tion to unite when dispersed, the moan of danger, 
the shriek of alarm, the notice of food.’* 
It was, no doubt, from such views as these, that 
the notion originated of birds being possessed of a 
language, and of a knowledge of it having been ob- 
tained by certain individuals. The faculty of inter- 
»preting the language of birds is attributed, in classic 
* Journal of a Naturalist, p. 269, 3d edit. 
