LETTER LXXXV. 

 To THE Honourable Daines Barrington. 



From the motion of birds, the transition is natu- 

 ral enough to their notes and language, of which I 

 shall say something. Not that I would pretend to 

 understand their language, like the vizier of the 

 Spectator, 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 an- 

 cient, and, like other ancient modes of speech, very 

 elliptical ; little is said, but much is meant and un- 

 derstood. 



The notes of the eagle-kind are shrill and pier- 

 cing ; 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 



