NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 233 



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 con- 

 cerned, but catches from yard to yard, and spreads to every home- 

 stead 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 clocking and screaming about, and 

 seems agitated as if possessed. 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 clock or larum ? 

 as the watchman that proclaims the divisions of the night. Thus 

 the poet elegantly styles him : 



" the crested cock, whose clarion sounds 



The silent hours." 



A neighbouring gentleman one summer had lost most of his 

 chickens by a sparrow-hawk, that came gliding down between a 

 faggot pile and the end of his house to the place where the coops 

 stood. The owner, inwardly vexed to see his flock thus diminished^ 

 hung a setting-net adroitly between the pile and the house, into 

 which the caitiff dashed, and was entangled. Resentment sugges- 

 ted the law of retaliation ; he therefore clipped the hawk's wings, 

 cut off his talons, and, fixing a cork on his bill, threw him down 

 among the brood-hens. Imagination cannot paint the scene that 

 ensued ; the expressions that fear, rage, and revenge, inspired, were 

 new, or at least such as had been unnoticed before : the exasperated 

 matrons upbraided, they execrated, they insulted, they 'triumphed. 

 In a word, they never desisted from buffeting their adversary till 

 they had torn him in an hundred pieces. 



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