216 FROM NORTH POLE TO EQUATOR. 



screaming sea-eagle, resident beside all the water-courses and water- 

 basins of the forest, justifies his name. High on a tree-top sits the 

 "abu tok" (producer of the sound "tok") of the natives, a small 

 hornbill, calling his "tok" loudly and accompanying each sound with 

 a nod of his head, weighted with its disproportionately large bill. 

 Only this one sound does his unpliant voice produce, yet with it he 

 expresses his love to the mate he is wooing, or has won, as intelli- 

 gibly as the nightingale tells its tale in its bewitching song. The 

 emotion swelling in his breast struggles for expression. The cries 

 follow each other in more and more rapid succession, the appropriate 

 movements become more and more rapid, until the heavy head is 

 too tired to accompany any longer, and one phrase of this singular 

 love-song comes to an end, to be begun and sung through again in 

 precisely the same manner a few minutes later. From the unap- 

 proachable thicket sounds the voice of the hagedash or wood-ibis, 

 and a slight shudder seizes the listener. The song of this bird is a 

 lamentation of the most pitiful kind; it sounds as if a little child 

 were being painfully tortured, perhaps slowly roasted over a small 

 fire, and were crying out in its anguish; for long-drawn plaintive 

 sounds alternate with shrill cries, sudden shrieks with faint meanings. 

 From the high-lying parts of the forest, where there are small bare 

 patches, resound the far-reaching metallic trumpet-tones with which 

 the crested crane accompanies his graceful, lively dances in honour 

 of his mate, and these awaken an echo in the forest, as well as in 

 the throat of every bird possessed, like himself, of a ringing voice, so 

 that his cry is the signal for a simultaneous outburst of song from 

 a large number of other birds. Thus incited, every bird with 

 any voice at all gives utterance to it, and for a time a flood of 

 varied sounds drowns the individual voices. But it is not only the 

 different species of feathered inhabitants of the forest who thus take 

 different parts in the piece; sometimes even the two sexes of one 

 species each sing a different part. The babbling thrushes, plantain- 

 eaters, francolins, and guinea-fowl scream together like the barbets 

 already described, and thus evoke those strange complex phrases, 

 which ring out distinctly from the general confusion of voices. But 

 in a few species, particularly in the bush-shrikes, the male and 



