110 BIRD LANGUAGE 



probably in great measure by heredity, with the presence 

 of a venomous reptile. But the hiss of a bird is not the 

 same as that of the ' gods ' in a theatre. The human hiss 

 is a sibilant, produced by the expulsion of air between the 

 tip of the tongue and the upper incisors; the hiss of 

 a bird is a sharp guttural, as may be seen by watching 

 a gander, which produces the sound with his bill pretty 

 wide open. 



Mr. Witchell, in his Evolution of Bird Song, succeeded 

 better in reducing the calls and songs of birds to musical 

 notation than in rendering them in literary characters. 

 He gives long scores of music of the blackbird, thrush, 

 skylark, and other songsters. His page on the barndoor 

 cock is an amusing one 



In September 1890 I heard a cock utter an unusual 

 crow : 





In the following September, at a different place, I heard 

 another uttering this cheerful strain : 



In the city of Vancouver a rooster uttered his clear, long 

 crow in three notes, as follows : 



Ifi * I ^ 



