272 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



still the "clucking" of the hen only excited fear, though the chicks would 

 run confidingly to the hand of the lecturer. Further details were given of 

 the habits of young birds brought up away from the parent, giving evidence 

 of intelligence and application, but showing a lack of the usual peculiarities 

 when unable to learn them from other members of their species. The 

 lecturer pointed out that there are two methods of communicating thoughts 

 and wishes — the visible method, i.e., gesture, and the audible, or language, 

 and that in man the latter had become so complete and accurate that the 

 former was unnecessary, though in lower animals it was all-important- 

 Keeping to the domestic fowl as a type, he admitted the great difficulty of 

 learning its language, as the means of gesture and the organs of speech are 

 so different from our own. By a series of lantern slides he explained the 

 apparatus in man and in these birds for producing sounds and articulate 

 speech, showing in each case which parts of the organs are brought into 

 use for the different sounds. Long and close observation of the poultry 

 yard had enabled him not only to analyze the sounds produced, and to 

 explain them physiologically, but also to learn their significance and imitate 

 them so successfully as to be understood by the birds themselves. He 

 pointed out that they would not notice or answer to ordinary pet names, 

 but looked up at once if their own call-notes were imitated. They did not 

 understand pointing with the finger, as they themselves pointed with the 

 head and beak. Very close investigations were given by the lecturer of the 

 call-notes of different individuals, the alarm note, the call to food, and the 

 cry of danger. Gestures and expressions of fear and disgust, the mode of 

 salute, and soothing reassuring sounds heard at roosting time in the 

 darkness were described and imitated. Distinct gestures and notes are 

 used when one bird challenges another, and the brooding hen has a 

 vocabulary of her own, modified and limited till her young ones are able to 

 run about. The crowing of the cocks, though similar to the ears of the 

 uninitiated, differs in individuals, and varies with the emotions which it 

 expresses. Interesting accounts were given of the intelligence shown by 

 these birds in learning to unlatch the door of a fowl-house, and in aiding a 

 search for rats. In conclusion the lecturer urged the members of the 

 Society to undertake further investigation into the language of birds, a study 

 for which there is special facility in the case of domesticated species. 



Young Pewits and Pheasants Swimming. — I was interested to see 

 some young Pewits take voluntarily to the water, one in particular swimming 

 perhaps eighty yards. I have also seen young Pheasants, only a few days 

 old, take to the water and successfully cross a small pool of dark-coloured 

 water in a peat-moss. — Charles F. Archibald (Rusland Hall, Ulverstou). 



Increase of the Hawfinch in Sussex. — It appears to be the almost 

 unanimous conviction of ornithologists that the Hawfinch has extended its 

 range and increased in numbers of late )ears in England ; and it is pleasing 

 to record that a careful endeavour to arrive at the true position which the 



