. No inhabitants of a yard seem possessed of such 



a variety of expression, and so copious a language, 

 1*1 CHS a s common poultry. 



Take a chicken of four or five days old, and hold 

 it up to a 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 note. 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 and screaming about, and 

 seems agitated as if possessed. 



The father of the Sock has also a considerable vocabulary ; if he 

 finds food, he calls a favourite 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. G. W. 



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