262 LANGUAGE OF BIRDS. 



their legs hanging down, and hardly make any 

 despatch ; the reason is plain, their wings are 

 placed too forward out of the true centre of 

 gravity ; as the legs of auks and divers are 

 situated too backward. 



XLIII. 



FROM the motion of hirds, the transition is 

 natural enough to their notes and language, of 

 which I shall say something. Not that I would 

 pretend to understand their language like the 

 vizier, who, hy 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. 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 



north of England, they arrive in the marshes and lakes to 

 breed, and retire again at the commencement of winter to the 

 more southern coasts. W. J. 

 1 See Spectator, vol. vii. No. 512. 



