LANGUAGE OF BIEDS. 245 



erect on their tails; these are the compedes of Linnaeus. 

 G-eese and cranes, and most wild fowls, move in figured 

 nights, 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. 

 Dabchicks, 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 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 a vizier, who, by the recital of a conver- 

 sation which passed between two owls, reclaimed a sultan,t 

 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 impor- 

 tant sounds ; no bird, like the fish J kind, is quite mute, 

 though some are rather silent. The language of birds is 



* Coots have a very powerful flight when once on the wing and fly with 

 their legs stretched out behind, acting the part of a tail, in the manner of the 

 heron. In Scotland and the north of England, they arrive in the marshes 

 and lakes to hreed, and retire at the commencement of winter to the more 

 southern coasts. W. J. 



f See Spectator, vol. vii. No. 512. 



J Fish are not always mute. I have not unfrequently heard tench utter 

 sounds, and Mr. Thompson of Hull, says that some tench which he caught 

 made a croaking like a frog for a full half hour, whilst in the basket on his 

 shoulder. ED. 



