DOMESTIC FOWL 437 



April 2, 1853. The farmers are trembling for their 

 poultry nowadays. I heard the scream of hens, and a 

 tumult among their mistresses (at Dugan's), calling 

 them and scaring away the hawk, yesterday. They say 

 they do not lose by hawks in midsummer. White quotes 

 Linnaeus as saying of hawks, " Paciscuntur inducias cum 

 avibus, quamdiu cuculus cuculat," but White doubts it. 1 



June 2, 1853. The birds are wide awake, as if know- 

 ing that this fog presages a fair day. I ascend Naw- 

 shawtuct from the north side. I am aware that I yield 

 to the same influence which inspires the birds and the 

 cockerels, whose hoarse courage I hear now vaunted. 

 So men should crow in the morning. I would crow like 

 chanticleer in the morning, with all the lustiness that 

 the new day imparts, without thinking of the evening, 

 when I and all of us shall go to roost, — with all the 

 humility of the cock, that takes his perch upon the 

 highest rail and wakes the country with his clarion. 

 Shall not men be inspired as much as cockerels ? 



Nov. 23, 1853. The cocks are the only birds I hear, 

 but they are a host. They crow as freshly and bravely 

 as ever, while poets go down the stream, degenerate 

 into science and prose. 



Oct. 19, 1855. Therien tells me, when I ask if he has 

 seen or heard any large birds lately, that he heard a 

 cock crow this morning, a wild one, in the woods. It 

 seems a dozen fowls (chickens) were lost out of the cars 

 here a fortnight ago. Poland has caught some, and they 



1 [Gilbert White, Natural History of Selborne, letter of Sept. 13, 

 1774, to Daines Barrington. " They make a truce with the birds as long 

 as the cuckoo sings."] 



