328 The Natural History of Selborne 



window where there are flies, and it will immediately seize its 

 prey, with little twitterings of complacency ; but if you tender 

 it a wasp or a bee, at once its note becomes harsh, and 

 expressive of disapprobation and a sense of danger. When 

 a pullet is ready to lay she intimates the event by a joyous 

 and easy soft n te. Of all the occurrences of their life that 

 of laying seems to be the most important ; for no sooner has 

 a hen disburdened herself, than she rushes 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 homestead 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 clucking [clacking] and screaming about, and seems 

 agitated as if possessed. The father of the flock has also a 

 considerable 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 divisions of the night. Thus the poet elegantly 

 styles 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 gliding 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 diminished, hung a setting-net adroitly be- 

 tween the pile and the house, into which the caitiff dashed, 

 and was entangled. Resentment suggested the law of retalia- 

 tion ; he therefore clipped the hawk's wings, cut off his talons, 

 and, fixing a cork on his bill, threw him down among the 



