OWLS IN A VILLAGE l69 



animal with a striking and imitable voice is 

 found its call is used by them. Where no such 

 sound is heard, as in large towns, they invent a 

 call ; that is, one invents it and the others 

 immediately take it up. It is curious that the 

 human species, in spite of its long wild life in 

 the past, should have no distinctive call, or calls, 

 universally understood. Among savage tribes 

 the men often mimic the cry of some wild 

 animal as a call, just as our children do that of 

 an owl by night, and of some diurnal species in 

 the daytime. Other tribes have a call of their 

 own, a shout or yell peculiar to the tribe ; but 

 it is not used instinctively — it is a mere symbol, 

 and is artificial, like the long-drawn piercing 

 coo-ee of the Australian colonists in the bush, 

 and the abrupt Hi ! with which we hail a cab, 

 with other forms of hallooing ; or even the lupine 

 gurgled yowl of the morning milkman. 



After dark the silence at the village was very 

 profound until about half-past nine to ten o'clock, 

 when the real owls, so easily to be distinguished 

 from their human mockers, would begin their 

 hooting — a single, long, uninflected note, and 

 after it a silent interval of eight or ten seconds ; 



