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 under- 

 stand their language like the vizier ; who, by the recital of 

 a conversation which passed between two owls reclaimed a 

 sultan, 1 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 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. 2 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. 3 The notes 



1 See Spectator, Vol. vii., No. 512. [G. W.] 



3 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 their 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. Schomburgk writes of the Phractocephalus of the Guiana rivers " that 

 when hauled on shore they make a loud grunting noise." [W. J.] 



3 His brother, John White. [R. B. S.] 



