

OF SELBORNE. 337 



and scarce discernible. The cock turkey struts and 

 gobbles to his mistress in a most uncouth manner ; he 

 hath also a pert and petulant note when he attacks his 

 adversary. When a hen turkey leads forth her young 

 brood she keeps a watchful eye ; and if a bird of prey 

 appear, though ever so high in the air, the careful 

 mother announces the enemy with a little inward moan, 

 and watches him with a steady and attentive look; but, 

 if he approach, her note becomes earnest and alarming, 

 and her outcries are redoubled. 



No inhabitants of a yard seem possessed of such 

 a variety of expression and so copious a language as 

 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 twit- 

 terings 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 disburthened 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 clock- 

 ing and screaming about, and seems agitated as if pos- 

 sessed. The father of the flock has also a considerable 

 vocabulary : if he finds food, he calls a favourite con- 

 cubine 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 



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