210 PASSERES. CORVID,E. 



the Crows are garrulous, and several are capable 

 of tolerable imitations of human speech, but the 

 present is the only example I am aware of, in 

 which the language of man is resembled by a bird 

 in a state of nature. The resemblance, however, 

 is rather general than particular; every one who 

 hears it is struck with its likeness to speech, though 

 he cannot detect any known words : it is the lan- 

 guage of a foreigner. One cannot easily convey an 

 idea of the sounds by writing ; but the following 

 fragments which the negroes have been able to 

 catch from the learned bird's own mouth, will give 

 some notion of their character. " Walk fast, crab ! 

 do buckra work. Cuttacoo* better than wallet." 

 It must not be supposed that these words uniformly 

 represent the sounds; these and similar combinations 

 of harsh consonants and broad vowels, are varied ad 

 infinitum, as are also the tones in which they are 

 expressed. For myself, I have thought them ludi- 

 crously like the very peculiar voice of Punch in a 

 puppet-show ; others have fancied in them half- 

 a dozen Welshmen quarrelling. These strange 

 sounds are generally poured forth in sentences, of 

 varying length, from the summit of some lofty tree, 

 or in the course of the bird's passage from one to 

 another. 



In some parts of the mountains they are not un- 

 common, though their loquacity would induce us to 

 think them more numerous than they are, for we 

 rarely see more than two or three at once. They 

 are social, but not gregarious; and much of their 



* A cuttacoo is a negro's little hand-basket 



