When a pullet is ready to lay she intimates the
event by a joyous and easy soft note. Of all the occurrences of their
life that of laying seems to be the most important; for no sooner
has a hen disburdened herself, than she rushes 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, but catches from yard to yard, and spreads to
every homestead 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 considerable 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 divisions of the
night.
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