OF SELBORNE 189 



along, while missel-thrushes use a wild and desultory flight ; swal- 

 lows sweep over the surface of the ground and water, and 

 distinguish themselves by rapid turns and quick evolutions ; 

 swifts dash round in circles ; and the bank-martin moves with 

 frequent vacillations like a butterfly. Most of the small birds 

 fly by jerks, rising and falling as they advance. Most small birds 

 hop ; but wagtails and larks walk, moving their legs alternately. 

 Ski/larks rise and fall perpendicularly as they sing ; woodlarks 

 hang poised in the air ; and titlarks rise and fall in large curves, 

 singing in their descent. The white-throat uses odd jerks and 

 gesticulations over the tops of hedges and bushes. All the 

 duck-kind waddle ; divers and auks walk as if fettered, and stand 

 erect on their tails : these are the compedes of Linnceus. Geese 

 and cranes, and most wild-fowls, move in figured flights, often 

 changing their position. The secondary remiges 1 of Tringce, 

 wild-ducks, and some others, are very long, and give their wings, 

 when in motion, an hooked appearance. Dabchicks, moor-hem, 

 and coots, fly erect, with their legs hanging down, and hardly 

 make any dispatch ; the reason is plain, their wings are placed 

 too forward out of the true centre of gravity ; as the legs of auks 

 and divers are situated too backward. 



LETTER XLIII. 



TO THE SAME. 



Selborne, Sept. 9, 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, 2 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 express their various passions, wants, and feelings ; 

 such as anger, fear, love, hatred, hunger, and the like. All 

 species are not equally eloquent ; some are copious and fluent 



1 [These are the inner secondaries, or tertials, as they were formerly called, 

 which are long in these birds ; the true secondaries are short.] 



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



