The white-throat uses odd jerks and
gesticulations over the tops of hedges and bushes. All the duck-
kind waddle; divers and auks walk as if fettered, and stand erect on
their tails: these are the compedes of Linnaeus. Geese and cranes,
and most wild-fowls, move in figured flights, often changing their
position. The secondary rerniges of tringae, wild-ducks, and some
others, are very long, and give their wings, when in motion, an
hooked appearance. Dab-chicks, moor-hens, and coots, fly erect,
with their legs hanging down, and hardly make any dispatch; the
reason is plain, their wings are placed too forward out of the true
centre of gravity; as the legs of auks and divers are situated too
backward.
Letter XLIII
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Selborne, Sept. 9, 1778.
Dear Sir,
From the motion of birds, the transition is natural enough to their
notes and language, of which I shall say something. Not that I
would pretend to understand their language like the vizier who, by
the recital of a conversation which passed between two owls,
reclaimed a sultan,* before delighting in conquest and devastation;
but I would be thought only to mean that many of the winged tribes
have various sounds and voices adapted to express their various
passions, wants, and feelings; such as anger, fear, love, hatred,
hunger, and the like.
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