DAWS IN THE WEST COUNTRY 83 



own mind, presumably always vague about 

 natural sounds, than of what the poet Cowper 

 had said in the best passage in his best work 

 about " sounds harsh and inharmonious in them- 

 selves," which are yet able to produce a soothing 

 effect on us on account of the peaceful scenes 

 amid which they are heard. 



Cowper's notion of the daw's voice, by the 

 way, was just as false as that expressed by 

 K-uskin, as we may find in his paraphrase of 

 Vincent Bourne's Unes to that bird : — 



There is a bird that by his coat. 

 And by the hoarseness of his note 

 Might be supposed a crow. 



Now the daw is capable at times of emitting 

 both hoarse and harsh notes, and the same may 

 perhaps be said of a majority of birds ; but his 

 usual note — the cry or caw varied and inflected 

 a hundred ways, which we hear every day and 

 all day long where daws abound — is neither 

 harsh like the crow's, nor hoarse Uke the rook's. 

 It is, in fact, as unUke the harsh, grating caw 

 of the former species as the clarion caU of the 

 cock is unlike the grunting of swine. It may 



