i68 NETHER LOCHABER. 



he has noticed that cocks don't crow now-a-days as they used to 

 do? We refer of course to the common barndoor fowl Gallus 

 domesticus, the domestic cock. He, we assert, does not now- 

 a-days crow with the same regularity and timeousness, nor with 

 the clear, clarion notes with which he did 



" Salutation to the morn," 



say a score of years ago. This may seem a startling assertion, but 

 any one who deigns to turn his attention to the subject will find 

 that it is true. The cock-crowing and wing-clapping of the House 

 of Commons when in the humour is no doubt highly creditable to 

 that august assembly. (It was Boswell, if we recollect well, who 

 imitated the lowing of a cow to admiration, and was naturally very 

 proud of so rare an accomplishment.) But the march of civilisation, 

 and cross-breeding, which you may call "internationalism" if you 

 like, have been the ruin of our cocks, so far as crowing is concerned. 

 They may weigh more than they did a score of years ago, and 

 present a plumper form on the table, but their crowing is gone : at 

 the best it is but a harsh, spasmodic, unmusical half-scream half- 

 wheeze, altogether unlike the loud and lusty, the clear, ringing 

 notes of the cock-crowing of our boyhood days. Our cocks are no 

 longer chanticleers, but chantiqueers. If you have occasion to sit 

 up at night, or to start on a journey betwixt midnight and morning, 

 the cock no longer lends you any countenance or aid in the matter 

 he sleeps on his perch in utter oblivion of the passing hours, and 

 as heedless of the " watches of the night " as the brooding hen in 

 the coop beneath him. The day may dawn, and the sun may flood 

 the moimtain peaks with light, glad and golden, without a note of 

 welcome or recognition on the part of the bird that, from the 

 earliest ages until recent years, was known as the herald of the 

 dawn, and deservedly held in high honour and esteem as the vigilant 

 sentinel of the homestead throughout the midnight and early morn- 



