NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 229 



LETTER XLIII. 



SELBORNE, Sept. 9th, 1778. 



FROM the motion of birds, 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, by the recital of a conversation which 

 passed between two owls, reclaimed a sultan,* 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 at Gibraltar, where eagles abound. The notes 

 of our hawks much resemble those of the king of birds. 

 Owls have very expressive notes ; they hoot in a fine vocal 

 sound, much resembling the vox humana, and reducible by 

 a pitch-pipe to a musical key. This note seems to express 

 complacency and rivalry among the males ; they use also a 

 quick call and a horrible scream, and can snore and hiss 

 when they mean to menace. Ravens, besides their loud 



* See Spectator, Vol. vii., No. 512. 



