178 BIRDS AND MAN 



the wood owl's clear prolonged note ; and in every- 

 place where some animal with a striking and imitable 

 voice is found its call is used by them. Where no 

 such sound is heard, as in large towns, they invent a 

 call ; that is, one invents it and the others immedi- 

 ately take it up. It is curious that the human species, 

 in spite of its long wild life in the past, should have 

 no distinctive call, or calls, universally understood. 

 Among savage tribes the men often mimic the cry 

 of some wild animal as a call, just as our children do 

 that of an owl by night, and of some diurnal species 

 in the daytime. Other tribes have a call of their 

 own, a shout or yell peculiar to the tribe ; but it is 

 not used instinctively — it is a mere symbol, and is 

 artificial, like the long-drawn piercing coo-ee of the 

 Australian colonists in the bush, and the abrupt Hi ! 

 with which we hail a cab, with other forms of haloo- 

 ing ; or even the lupine gurgled yowl of the morning 

 milkman. 



After dark the silence at the village was very pro- 

 found until about half-past nine to ten o'clock, when 

 the real owls, so easily to be distinguished from their 

 human mockers, would begin their hooting — a single, 

 long, uninflected note, and after it a silent interval 

 of eight or ten seconds ; then the succeeding longer, 

 much more beautiful note, quavering at first, but 



