FLIGHT AND LANGUAGE OF BIRDS. 223 



sweep over the surface of the ground and water, and distinguish 

 themselves by rapid turns and quick evolutions : swifts dash 

 round in circles ; and the bank-marten moves with frequent 

 vacillations like a butterfly. Most of the small birds fly by 

 jerks, rising and falling as they advance. Most small birds 

 hop ; but wagtails and larks walk, moving their legs alter- 

 nately. Sky-larks rise and fall perpendicularly as they sing ;* 

 woodlarks hang poised in the air ; and titlarks rise and fall 

 in large curves, singing in their descent. The white-throat 

 uses odd jerks and gesticulations over the tops of hedges and 

 bushes. All the duck kind waddle ; divers and auks walk as 

 if fettered, and stand erect on their tails ; these are the 

 compedes of Linnaeus. Geese and cranes, and most wild 

 owls, move in figured flights, often changing their position. 

 The secondary remiges of tringce, wild ducks, and some others, 

 are very long, and give their wings, when in motion, a hooked 

 appearance. Dabchicks, moor-hens, and coots, fly erect, 

 with 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. 



LETTER LXXXV. 



TO THE HON. DAINES BARRINGTON. 



SELBORNE, September 9, 1778. 



DEAR SIR, 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,f 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 



* The male of the yellow breasted chat, icteria polyglotta of Swain- 

 son, while the female is sitting, sometimes mounts up into the air almost 

 perpendicularly, to the height of thirty or forty feet, with his legs hanging, 

 descending, as he rose, by repeated jerks, as if highly irritated. ED. 



f See Spectator, No. 512. 



