NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 231 



LETTER XLIII. 



TO THE SAME. 



SELBORNE, Sept. gth, 1778. 



DEAR SIR, From the motion of birds, the transition is natural 

 enough to their notes and language, of which I shall say something. 

 Not that I would pretend to understand their language like the 

 vizier ; who, by the recital of a conversation which passed between 

 two owls reclaimed a sultan,* before delighting in conquest and 

 devastation ; but I would be thought only to mean that many of 

 the winged tribes have various sounds and voices adapted to ex- 

 press their various passions, wants, and feelings ; such as anger, 

 fear, love, hatred, hunger, and the like. All species are not equally 

 eloqnent ; some are copious and fluent as it were in their utterance, 

 while others are confined to a few important sounds : no bird, like 

 the fish kind, is quite mute, though some are rather silent, f The 

 language of birds is very ancient, and, like other ancient modes of 

 speech, very elliptical; little is said, but much is meant and 

 understood. 



The notes of the eagle-kind are shrill and piercing ; and about 

 the season of nidification much diversified, as I have been often 

 assured by a curious observer of Nature, who long resided at 

 Gibraltar, where eagles abound. The notes of our hawks much 

 resemble those of the king of birds. Owls have very expressive 

 notes ; they hoot in a fine vocal sound, much resembling the vox 

 humana, and reducible by a pitch-pipe to a musical key. This 

 note seems to express complacency and rivalry among the males ; 

 they use also a quick call and an horrible scream ; and can snore 

 and hiss when they mean to menace. Ravens, besides their loud 

 croak, can exert a deep and solemn note that makes the woods to 

 echo ; the amorous sound of a crow is strange and ridiculous ; 



* See Spectator, Vol. vii.. No. 512. 



t Fish are not all mute. The grey gurnard, Trigla gurnardus, called crooner from its 

 noise, may be seen in a calm day in large shoals rising and ploughing the surface of the 

 sea with the>r noses, at which time they utter a grunting sound which may be heard at a 

 distance of half a mile ; we have heard them called grunters. Schomburck writes of the 

 Phractoce phalii s of the Guiana rivers "that when hauled on shore they make a loud 

 grunting noise." 



