94 The Natural History of Selborne 



V - v 

 Jieron 



a wonderful and curious creature ; but I have always found 

 that though sometimes it may chatter as it flies, as I know it 

 does, yet in general it utters its jarring note sitting on a 

 bough ; and I have for many a half-hour watched it as it sat 

 with its under mandible quivering, and particularly this 

 summer. It perches usually on a bare twig, with its head 

 lower than its tail, in an attitude well expressed by your 

 draughtsman in the folio " British Zoology." This bird 

 is most punctual in beginning its song exactly at the close 

 of day ; so exactly that I have known it strike up more 

 than once or twice just at the report of the Portsmouth 

 evening gun, which we can hear when the weather is still. 

 It appears to me past all doubt that its notes are formed by 

 organic impulse, by the powers of the parts of its windpipe, 

 formed for sound, just as cats purr. You will credit me, I 



