144 BIRDS OF THE COUNTRYSIDE 



bird-life seen at its freest, most expansive, and rhyth- 

 mical. The birds all seemed to be falling into measure 

 with the throbbing spirit of the universe. They in their 



Pure and circling thoughts express 

 The greater Heaven in an Heaven less. 



October 27th. — ^The green woodpecker is common here, 

 and I saw or heard him every day, either in flight 

 or upon hedgerow elms or feeding upon ants on banks. 

 Indeed, without seeing Fletcher's or Shakespeare's 

 " chattering pies " or hearing this woodpecker's tumult- 

 uous, abandoned laughter, as though Nature leaped 

 like David before the Ark and shouted for joy, the day 

 for me was a dies non, and this sight and this sound 

 have ever remained to me the first in favour above all 

 others which large birds can give. We can see him 

 or rather hear him too from the other end of the 

 tale, for there are times when he suspends his song 

 half-way to the end, and there is a certain resemblance 

 to the loud double chirp of the greater spotted wood- 

 pecker, itself perhaps close to the original call-note of 

 the woodpecker family, from which springs the beautiful, 

 proud voice of our bird. 



It is strange to think that the world of animate 

 nature was once " dumb " indeed. The Labyrinthodonts 

 of the Permian period must have achieved their great 

 conquest of the land without any shout of triumph — 

 have mated silently, grappled silently and died silently. 

 What amphibian was it that first used language and 

 startled a speechless world with the first grunt or roar 

 ever heard ? He anticipated Shakespeare. Witchell in 

 his remarkable and unjustly neglected Evolution of Bird- 

 Song suggests that the first articulations of birds were 

 produced by the excitement of fighting, which agitated 

 their lungs. But it is just as likely that they were 

 produced by the excitements of sexual impulse, that 

 they were call-notes rather than alarm or battle-cries, 

 the alarm-cry possibly being a variant of the call -note, 

 which was seized upon by sexual selection, and gradually 

 differentiated and elaborated like plumage and display. 



