WATCHING ROOKS 289 



certain well - understood sound conveying a certain 

 idea or ideas — as, first, 'burr,' a particular kind of 

 joyous flight : then, ' burr,' something as joyous as 

 such flight, and so, joy: and lastly, 'burr,' the actual 

 joyous flying, the root, therefore, of the verb 'burr,' 

 to fly joyously, and, so, to fly. Darwin supposes 

 language to owe its origin ' to the imitation and 

 modification of various natural sounds, the voices of 

 other animals and man's own instinctive cries, aided 

 by signs and gestures.' To repeat a certain sound, 

 that had been at first the mere mechanical adjunct 

 of a certain act or state, when one recalled that act 

 or state, would be, as it seems to me, an extremely 

 early — perhaps the earliest — step, passing imperceptibly 

 from feeling into thought, and leading on to imitation. 

 Such speculations may be permitted one, in a dark 

 fir - plantation, surrounded by rooks and waiting for 

 the morning. 



"One thing, however, I record as a fact, which appears 

 to me somewhat curious. Though the plantation is 

 continuous, without any break other than the narrow 

 path that runs through its centre, and though it is 

 simply crowded with rooks, every tree holding a great 

 many, yet I notice that an outbreak of sound in any 

 particular part of it does not spread over the whole, 

 as one might have supposed that it would, but dies 

 gradually out, as it radiates from the point where it 

 arose. Thus, there are zones of sound, isolated from 

 each other by intervening areas of silence. Just at 

 this moment, after I have sat, for some time, silent, 

 and all alarm has subsided, there is a great clamorous 

 outburst some little way off! It must have some 

 special cause which I cannot divine, but this com- 

 T 



