CHANTICLEEB. 
149 
my mind with the first far-heard notes of Chanti- 
cleer. 
It was very dark and quiet when I woke ; my 
window was open, with only a lace curtain before 
it to separate me from the open air. Presently 
the profound silence was broken. From a distance 
of fifty or sixty yards away on the left hand 
came the crow of a cock, soon answered by another 
further away on the same side, and then, further 
away still, by a third. Other voices took up the 
challenge on the right, some near, some far, until 
it seemed that there was scarcely a house in the 
neighbourhood at which Chanticleer was not a 
dweller. There was no other sound. Not for 
another hour would the sparrows burst out in 
a chorus of chirruping notes, lengthened or 
shortened at will, variously inflected, and with a 
ringing musical sound in some of them, which 
makes one wonder why this bird, so high in the 
scale of nature, has never acquired a set song for 
itself For there is music in him, and when con- 
fined with a singing finch he will sometimes learn 
its song. Then the robins, then the tits, then the 
starlings, gurgling, jarring, clicking, whistling, 
chattering. Then the pigeons cooing soothingly 
on the roof and window-ledges, taking flight from 
time to time with sudden, sharp flap, flap, followed 
by a long, silken sound made by the wings in 
