36 WINTER NOTES 



silence, however much clamour they may make on 

 waking. 



To whom, then, is this advertisement addressed by the 

 cock pheasant and the blackbird ? It may be assumed 

 that every note of a bird is intended to convey informa- 

 tion to its fellows on some subject of importance. Even 

 man, most garrulous of all creatures, rarely indulges 

 in soliloquy, and feels much ashamed when detected 

 in so doing. Certainly, it is exceptional to hear a 

 self-respecting human householder bellowing 'Rule 

 Britannia ' or ' I fear no Foe in Shining Armour ' as he 

 takes his bedroom candlestick. But this is just what 

 the cock pheasant and the blackbird do at all seasons. 

 You may hear the wise partridge calling at sundown in 

 August ; but that is to summon her brood to their bed- 

 room. The cock pheasant sets more store on a single 

 barleycorn than on all the broods of all his many wives, 

 and the blackbird chatters as much at nightfall in mid- 

 winter as in May. Dr. Louis Robinson has lately pub- 

 lished some exceedingly interesting and suggestive 

 speculations on the hereditary and acquired habits of 

 wild animals ; but in his volume Wild Traits in Tame 

 Animals 1 this problem is not discussed. He does, 

 indeed, analyse the vocal peculiarities of domestic fowl ; 

 but these are mostly matutinal. The puzzle about the 

 pheasant and blackbird is that they make a noise pre- 

 cisely when prudence, experience, or instinct should 

 have warned them it were wiser to be silent. 



1 Edinburgh : Blackwood and Sons, 1897. 



