24 
THE LANGUAGE OF BIRDS. 
survive. I have known our country bird-catchers 
take them by a very simple but effectual method. 
Watching them to the ground, the wings of a hawk, 
or of the brown owl, stretched out, are drawn against 
the current of air by a string, as a paper kite, and 
made to flutter and vibrate like a kestrel over the 
place where the wood-lark has lodged, and so inti- 
midates the bird, that it remains crouching and mo- 
tionless as a stone on the ground ; a hand net is 
brought over it, and it is caught. 
From various little scraps of intelligence scattered 
through the sacred and ancient writings, it appears 
certain, as it was reasonable to conclude, that the 
notes now used by birds, and the voices of animals, 
are the same as uttered by their earliest progenitors. 
The language of man, without any reference to the 
confusion accomplished at Babel, has been broken 
into innumerable dialects, created or confounded as 
his wants occurred, or his ideas prompted, or ob- 
tained by intercourse with others, as mental enlarge- 
ment or novelty necessitated new words to express 
new sentiments. Could we find a people from Japan, 
or the Pole, whose progress in mind has been sta- 
tionary, without increase of idea, from national pre- 
