244 COMMON OR BARN-DOOR FOWL, 



forth with a clamorous kind of joy, which the Cock 

 and the rest of his mistresses immediately adopt. The 

 tumult is not confined to the family concerned, but 

 catches from yard to yard, and spreads to every home- 

 stead within hearing, till at last the whole village is in 

 an uproar. As soon as a Hen becomes a mother, her 

 new relation demands a new language ; she then runs 

 clocking and screaming about, and seems agitated as if 

 possessed. The father of the flock has also a conside- 

 rable vocabulary; if he finds food, he calls a favourite 

 concubine to partake ; and if a bird of prey passes 

 over, with a warning voice he bids his family beware. 

 The gallant chanticleer has, at command, his amorous 

 phrases and his terms of defiance. But the sound by 

 which he is best known, is his crowing : by this he has 

 been distinguished in all ages as the countryman's clock 

 or larum, as the watchman that proclaims the divi- 

 sions of the night. Thus the poet elegantly stiles him : 



' ' ' the crested Cock whose clarion sounds 

 The silent hours.' 



" A neighbouring gentleman, one summer, had lost 

 most of his chickens by a Sparrow-hawk, that came glid- 

 ing down between a faggot pile and the end of his 

 house to the place where the coops stood. The owner, 

 inwardly vexed to see his flock thus diminishing, hung 

 a setting net adroitly between the pile and the house, 

 into which the caitif dashed, and was entangled. Re- 

 sentment suggested the law of retaliation ; he there- 



