OF SELBORNE 207 



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 country- 

 man's clock or larum, 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 faggot 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 pUe 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 ofl^ 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 

 matrons upbraided, they execrated, they insulted, they 

 triumphed. In a word, they never desisted from buffeting 

 their adversary till they had torn him in an hundred pieces. 



LETTER XLIV 



TO THE HONOURABLE DAINES BARRINGTON 



Selborne. 

 " — — — — monstrent 



Quid tantiim Oceano properent se tingere soles 

 Hyberni ; vel quae tardis mora noctibus obstet." 



Gentlemen who have outlets might contrive to make 

 ornament subservient to utility ; a pleasing eye-trap might 



