CHANTICLEER 191 



window was open, with only a lace-curtain before 

 it to separate me from the open air. Presently the 

 profound silence was broken. From a distance of 

 fifty or sixty yards away on the left hand came the 

 crow of a cock, soon answered by another further 

 away on the same side, and then, further away still, 

 by a third. Other voices took up the challenge on 

 the right, some near, some far, until it seemed that 

 there was scarcely a house in the neighbourhood at 

 which Chanticleer was not a dweller. There was 

 no other sound. Not for another hour would the 

 sparrows burst out in a chorus of chirruping notes, 

 lengthened or shortened at will, variously inflected, 

 and with a ringing musical sound in some of them, 

 which makes one wonder why this bird, so high in 

 the scale of nature, has never acquired a set song for 

 itself. For there is music in him, and when confined 

 with a singing finch he will sometimes learn its 

 song. Then the robins, then the tits, then the 

 starlings, gurgling, jarring, clicking, whistling, chat- 

 tering. Then the pigeons cooing soothingly on the 

 roof and window-ledges, taking flight from time to 

 time with sudden, sharp flap, flap, followed by a 

 long, silken sound made by the wings in gliding. 

 At four the cocks had it all to themselves; and, 

 without counting the cockerels (not yet out of school), 

 I could distinctly hear a dozen birds ; that is to say, 

 they were near enough^for me to listen to their 



