222 NATURAL HISTORY 



alternately. Skylarks rise and fall perpendicularly as they 

 sing : woodlarks hang poised in the air ; and titlarks rise and 

 fall in large curves, singing in their descent. The white-throat 

 uses odd jerks and 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 com- 

 pedes of Linnwus. Geese and cranes, and most wild-fowls, 

 move in figured flights, often changing their position. The 

 secondary remiges of Tringai, 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 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, x 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 con- 

 fined 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. 

 x See Spectator, Vol. VII, N 512. 



