138 
WALDEN. 
distant coye the same password repeated, where the 
next in seniority and girth has gulped down to his 
mark; and when this observance has made the circuit 
of the shores, then ejaculates the master of ceremonies, 
with satisfaction, tr-r-r-oonk! and each in his turn re¬ 
peats the same down to the least distended, leakiest, and 
flabbiest paunched, that there be no mistake ; and then 
the bowl goes round again and again, until the sun dis¬ 
perses the morning mist, and only the patriarch is not 
under the pond, but vainly bellowing troonk from time 
to time, and pausing for a reply. 
I am not sure that I ever heard the sound of cock- 
crowing from my clearing, and I thought that it might 
be worth the while to keep a cockerel for his music 
merely, as a singing bird. The note of this once wild 
Indian pheasant is certainly the most remarkable of any 
bird’s, and if they could be naturalized without being 
domesticated, it would soon become the most famous 
sound in our w r oods, surpassing the clangor of the goose 
and the hooting of the owl; and then imagine the cac¬ 
kling of the hens to fill the pauses when their lords’ 
clarions rested ! No wonder that man added this bird 
to his tame stock,—to say nothing of the eggs and drum¬ 
sticks. To walk in a winter morning in a wood where 
these birds abounded, their native woods, and hear the 
wild cockerels crow on the trees, clear and shrill for 
miles over the resounding earth, drowning the feebler 
notes of other birds,—-think of it! It would put na¬ 
tions on the alert. Who would not be early to rise, 
and rise earlier and earlier every successive day of his 
life, till he became unspeakably healthy, wealthy, and 
wise? This foreign bird’s note is celebrated by the 
poets of all countries along with the notes of their na- 
