204 THE NATURAL HISTORY 



gesticulations over the tops of hedges and bushes. All the 

 duck-kind waddle ; divers and auks walk as if fettered, 

 and stand erect on their tails : these are the compedes of 

 Linnaeus, Geese and cranes, and most wild-fowls, move 

 in figured flights, often changing their position. The 

 secondary remiges of Tringae, wild-ducks, and some 

 others, are very long, and give their wings, when in 

 motion, an hooked appearance. Dab-chicks, moor-hens, 

 and coots, fly erect, with their legs hanging down, and 

 hardly make any dispatch ; 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 XLIII 

 TO THE HONOURABLE DAINES BARRINGTON 



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 

 elliptical : little is said, but much is meant and understood. 



^See Spectator, V^ol. VII., No. 512. 



