2o6 The Natural History 



watchful eye : and if a bird of prey appear, though ever 

 so high in the air, the careful mother announces the 

 enemy with a little inward moan, and watches him with 

 a steady and attentive look ; but if he approach, her note 

 becomes earnest and alarming, and her outcries are 

 redoubled. 



No inhabitants of a yard seem possessed of such a 

 variety of expression and so copious a language as common 

 poultry. Take a chicken of four or five days old, and 

 hold it up to a window where there are flies, and it will 

 immediately seize its prey, with little twitterings of com- 

 placency ; 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 con- 

 fined to the family concerned, but catches from yard to 

 yard, and spreads to every homestead 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 concubine to partake ; and if a 

 bird of prey passes over, with a warning voice he bids 

 his family beware. The gallant chanticleer has, at com- 

 mand, 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 pro- 

 claims 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 



