LANGUAGE OF BIRDS. 265 



forward out of the true centre of gravity; as the legs 

 of auks and divers are situated too backward. 



LETTER LXXXV. 



TO THE SAME. 



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 utterance, 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 ellip- 

 tical ; little is said, but much is meant and under- 

 stood. 



The notes of the eagle kind are shrill and piercing; 

 and about the season of nidification much diversified, 

 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 re- 



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



