i68 THE PSYCHICAL KINSHIP 



air in the most absurd manner, and all the time 

 pouring forth such a stream of melody that one 

 would think all the birds in the neighbourhood 

 had suddenly come together and let loose in a 

 grand festival of song. 



According to Chapman, many of the notes of 

 birds are language notes rather than sounds ex- 

 pressive of sentiment. Of the robin this well- 

 known student of birds says : ' The song and 

 call-notes of this bird, while familiar to everyone, 

 are in reality understood by no one, and offer 

 excellent subjects for the student of bird language. 

 Its notes express interrogation, suspicion, alarm, 

 and caution, and it signals to its companions to 

 take wing. Indeed, few of our birds have a more 

 extended vocabulary.' Winchell says that the 

 common English sparrow has as many as seven 

 different notes, which it uses to express the 

 thoughts and feelings passing through its rather 

 active but not very highly honoured head : (i) The 

 common note of address of the male to the female ; 

 (2) a note of alarm used by both male and female 

 adults, but never by the young ; (3) an emphatic 

 alarm note, always uttered by sentinels when a 

 hawk is near or when a man approaches with a 

 gun ; (4) the note of the female when surrounded 

 by several noisy and contending male rivals; 

 (5) an autumn cry uttered by the first one of the 

 company perceiving danger and flying up from 

 the hedges and r ields never uttered by young, 

 but by adults of both sexes ; (6) the love note of 

 both male and female, used mostly by the female, 



