226 LANGUAGE OF FOWLS. 



steady and attentive look ; but, if he approach, her note becomes 

 earnest and alarming, and her outcries are redoubled. 



No inhabitants of "a yard seem possessed of such a variety 

 of expression, and so copious a language, as common poultry. 

 Take a chicken of four or five days old, and hold it up to a 

 window where there are flies, and it will immediately seize its 

 prey with little twitterings of complacency ; but if you tender 

 it a wasp or a bee, at once its note becomes harsh, and expres- 

 sive of disapprobation and a sense of danger. When a pullet 

 is ready to lay, she intimates the event by a joyous and easy 

 soft note. Of all the occurrences of their life, that of laying 

 seems to be the most important ; for no sooner has a hen 

 disburdened herself, than she rushes forth with a clamorous 

 kind of joy, which the cock and the rest of his mistresses 

 immediately adopt. The tumult is not confined to the family 

 concerned, but catches from yard to yard, and spreads to every 

 homestead within hearing, till at last the whole village is in 

 an uproar. As soon as a hen becomes a mother, her new 

 relation demands a new language ; she then runs clucking and 

 screaming about, and seems agitated as if possessed. The 

 father of the flock has also a considerable vocabulary : if he 

 finds food, he calls a favourite concubine to partake ; and if a 

 bird of prey passes over, with a warning voice, he bids his 

 family beware. The gallant chanticleer has, at command, his 

 amorous phrases, and his terms of defiance. But the sound 

 by which he is best known is his crowing : by this he has been 

 distinguished in all ages as the countryman's clock orlarum, 

 as the watchman that proclaims the divisions of the night. 

 Thus the poet elegantly styles him 



the crested cock, whose clarion sounds 



The silent hours. 



A neighbouring gentleman, one summer, had lost most of 

 his chickens by a sparrow-hawk, that came gliding down, 

 between a fagot pile and the end of his house, to the place 

 where the coops stood. The owner, inwardly vexed to see 

 his flock thus diminishing, hung a setting net adroitly between 

 the pile and the house, into which the caitiff dashed", and was 

 entangled. Resentment suggested the law of retaliation ; he, 

 therefore, clipped the hawk's wings, cut off his talons, and, 

 fixing a cork on his bill, threw him down among the brood- 

 hens. Imagination cannot paint the scene that ensued ; the 

 expressions that fear, rage, and revenge inspired, were new. or 

 at least such as had been unnoticed before. The exasperated 



