234 
THE NATURAL HISTORY 
[LETT. 
clock or larum, as the watcliman that proclaims the divisions of 
the night. Thus the poet elegantly styles him : 
" — — the crested cock, whose clarion sounds 
The silent hours." 
A neighbouring gentleman one summer had lost most of his 
chickens by a sparrow-hawk, that came gliding down between a 
faggot pile and the end of his house, to the place where the 
coops stood. The owner, inwardly vexed to see his flock thus 
diminishing, hung a setting net adroitly between the pile and 
the house, into which the caitiff dashed, and was entangled. Ee- 
sentment suggested the law of retaliation ; he therefore clipped 
the hawk's wings, cut off his talons, and, fixing a cork on his 
bill, threw him down among the brood-hens. Imagination can- 
not paint the scene that ensued ; the expressions that fear, rage, 
and revenge inspired w^ere new, or at least such as had been 
unnoticed before : the exasperated matrons upbraided, they 
execrated, they insulted, they triumphed. In a word, they 
never desisted from buffeting their adversary till they had torn 
him in a hundred pieces. 
Selborne, Sejpt. 9, 1778. 
