Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 39.djvu/263

Rh the family was instantaneous; not another move or peep. The descent noted is similar to that made by the screech-owl. The intervals are identical; but the hen slides down with an oily smoothness, while the owl, as elsewhere shown, comes trembling, shivering down.

Being an hour late with their breakfast one morning, I was received by the feathered supplicants with unusual demonstra-tions. They crowded about me so closely I could hardly step without treading on their toes. With heads lifted much higher than one would think they could be, and eyes shining, their tones and inflections were exceedingly human. Like all birds, wild or tame, hens employ, ascending and descending, the intervals of our scale, except in cases as above described; they use the half-step and whole step, the major and minor thirds, the fourth, fifth, and sixth, with a good sprinkling of chromatics. In this instance, every degree of the staff was brought into requisition, the slide of a fourth upward occurring oftenest.

The notes of one hen were all the same, and piano:

But the rooster's petition "led all the rest." Striding about in the rear, an occasional brief command attesting his title of "captain," at length he burst out into this sonorous strain:

The captain's voice was round and powerful, and his intonation perfect. The slides of the third and fourth were carried up with a noble crescendo; and, when he rose to the tonic at the close, the effect was thrilling as that of a clarion blast. What