APRIL 109 



' Quee, quee, quee . . . tsorr tsorr . . . peeuu pecuu . . . tso, 

 rrrrrr he. Errrrrr se. WTiit rrrrrr. Tsu tsu tsu . . . chissick 

 tewy. Pee pee . . . ke. Tewy highlo highlo . . . klo klo klo, etc.' 



Ingenious, perhaps, but the result is ridiculous. Aristo- 

 phanes was saved by his sense of humour from introduc- 

 ing the like into his Birds. The utmost he allows himself 

 is to represent the public by ' Popopopopopopoi ! ' and the 

 twitter by ' Tititititititi ! ' To go further is to become 

 absurd. It is worse, it is misleading; for the voice of 

 every bird, and, for that matter, of every animal except 

 man, consists solely of vowel sounds and gutturals. There 

 are no consonants except gutturals in animal speech : it 

 is absurd to credit a nightingale, which has neither lips 

 nor teeth, with the pronunciation of labials and dentals. 

 Every writer on the subject, even Mr. Witchell, who has 

 given immense pains to the elucidation of bird speech, 

 has disregarded this phenomenon. Mr. Harting justly 

 compares the alarm note of the ring-ousel ' to the noise 

 made by striking two stones together ' ; but he is wrong 

 in rendering that of the fieldfare as tcha-cha-cha. A rook 

 does not say caw ; a sheep does not say baa ; a cow does 

 not say moo, nor a dog bow-wow. Listen to them! I 

 defy you to detect the sound of the conventional con- 

 sonant which we have introduced to express what really 

 defies expression in literary characters. 



Many birds hiss if disturbed when sitting on their 

 nests. The gander and the male mute-swan (the cob, as 

 he is technically called) hiss to warn intruders away from 

 their sitting mates or young brood. And the ruse is very 

 successful; even the little blue tit often succeeds in 

 causing the hurried withdrawal of the prying hand, for 

 hissing is closely associated, in the human intelligence, 



