Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 30.djvu/414

398 lark, the linnet, the curlew, the plover, the lapwing, and the bittern. Quite a number of birds announce the coming of rain; for instance, the magpie, the owl, the yellow thrush, and the greenfinch. This is also done by means of peculiar notes which they never sound on other occasions. Nicolardot has essayed to reproduce these notes by letters. There also are storm-birds, so-called procellaria, which in a similar manner—that is to say, by the use of certain peculiar sounds—predict the coming of a storm, even a long time in advance. Domestic fowl are often watchful for strangers; especially is this the case with peacocks, who are pretty sure to announce by cries the approach of strangers to house or farm.

Birds thus can feel and announce the coming of rain and storm, and already the ancients ascribed to them the faculty of prediction. In their flight and in their voices indications of coming events were sought. The augurs of old had established a whole science of the flight and the voices of birds. Nor is it improbable that training was resorted to, to aid in procuring such predictions—that is to say, to create favorable or unfavorable omens, whichever might happen to best suit the plans of the priests at the time.

Louis Napoleon, in our nineteenth century, intended to convince the French people, by the aid of a trained eagle which was to have alighted on his head at the right moment, that he was the predestined successor to his great uncle. Nicolardot does not go quite so far as the augurs of the ancients, but he also ascribes to birds a prescience of coming events, especially of approaching misfortune, to which feeling they lend expression by certain peculiar sounds. As an example he cites a tale from O'Meara's "Voice from St. Helena." When the French entered Moscow, this author relates, a great flock of ravens came and settled on the towers of the Kremlin. From there these birds, to which the ancients ascribed great sagacity, came flying down close to the heads of the soldiers, flapped their wings, and kept up a continuous, monotonous croaking. The troops were much disheartened by this occurrence, and feared misfortune. Shortly before the terrible conflagration broke out, all the ravens had disappeared, flying away in great numbers.

Napoleon I paid considerable attention to the voices of animals. O'Meara cites the following from a conversation of the emperor's: "How can we know that the animals have not a language of their own? Does it not seem to be very presuming on our part to deny the existence of such a language, simply because we do not understand it? We know that a horse has a memory, that it can make distinctions, that it shows antipathy and sympathy; it knows its master, and can tell him from the servants, although it sees the master but rarely, and has the grooms for company throughout the day."The emperor related that he had once owned a horse which always succeeded in finding him even when he had hidden among other people. This animal