244 
COMMON OE BAEN-DOOE FOWL, 
forth with a clamorous kind of joy, which the Cock 
and the rest of his mistresses immediately adopt. The 
tumult is not confined to the family concerned, hut 
catches from yard to yard, and spreads to every home- 
stead within hearing, till at last the whole village is in 
an uproar. As soon as a Hen becomes a mother, her 
new relation demands a new language ; she then runs 
clocking and screaming about, and seems agitated as if 
possessed. The father of the flock has also a conside- 
rable vocabulary; if he finds food, he calls a favourite 
concubine to partake ; and if a bird of prey passes 
over, with a warning voice he bids his family beware. 
The gallant chanticleer has, at command, his amorous 
phrases and his terms of defiance. But the sound by 
which he is best known, is his crowing : by this he has 
been distinguished in all ages as the countryman’s clock 
or larum, as the watchman that proclaims the divi- 
sions of the night. Thus the poet elegantly stiles 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 glid- 
ing down between a faggot pile and the end of his 
house to the place where tho 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 caitif dashed, and was entangled. Re- 
sentment suggested the law of retaliation ; he there- 
