and so may the eyes of all creatures that possess
the gift of sight. Gestures and signs, in like
manner, as we know, not only by the example
of the deaf and dumb, who have been taught
the alphabet of the fingers, but by what we may
daily witness in the conduct of domestic animals
towards each other, may serve largely for the
expression of love or hatred. This power of
language even Lord Monboddo and Mr. Locke
would have conceded; and so, doubtless, would
Mr. Max Müller. In this manner the meanest
things that live and feel have power of communication
with their fellows, as well as with such
a superior creature as man, when they become
either attached to or afraid of him. But the
question whether some kind of articulate
speech is not at their command—available
among themselves, though not to man, on
account of man's incapacity to bring down his big
intellect into the little circle of theirs, or of the
dulness of his ear to sounds that may be very
clear, sharp, and well defined to theirs—remains
unaffected by their undoubted possession of
the mute language of gesture and the eyes.
The spider, with his hundred eyes, cannot see
me if I stand at the distance of a few inches
from his cunning web; but would Mr. Spider,
if he were a philosopher, be justified, on that
account, in asserting that I was not there, or
even that I did not exist? Is it my imperfection
that he cannot behold me? In like manner,
is it not my imperfection if I cannot see or
hear that which smaller things can both hear
and see? The animalcule in a drop of water,
that sees and sometimes eats smaller animalcules
than himself, is doubtless in entire ignorance of
all beyond the circle of his water-drop; but he
would be a silly animalcule if he were, on that
account, to deny the existence of anything
bigger and nobler than himself. And you and
I, dear reader, may never have heard a fly talk
to a fly, or a worm to a worm, or been able to
make out the language of the birds when they
mate about St. Valentine's Day; but the fly
may have talked to the fly, the worm to the
worm, and the bird to the bird, all the same for
our incapacity to hear the talk of the one or
understand the song of the other.

Most people who are gifted with the faculty
of observing, and blessed with the privilege of
enjoying, the sights and sounds of nature, and
who have either resided in, or been frequent
visitors to, the country, must at one time or
other have remarked the actions and behaviour
of crows and rooks, or, in the quaint language
of the old Scottish poet, Alexander Montgomery,
must have listened to, and been "deaved
with the din"

          And jargon of the jangling jays,
          The craiking craws, and keckling kays.

No one who has at all studied the habits of
these birds will think it a very daring assertion
that the cry or sound of "caw" may be as
susceptible of a variety of meanings as the
Annamitic "ba," or the English "box," or the
French "sang," or the canine "bow-wow!"—and
that its duplication into "caw! caw!" or into a
still greater number of repetitions, is not without
a purpose and signification as intelligible
to the birds which utter as to those which hear
them. The rooks and crows have often been
observed to hold public meetings of all the
individuals in the tribe or colony—male and
female (for in their democracy, as well as in that
which Mr. John Stuart Mill proposes for
England, the mothers as well as the fathers,
the paired as well as the unpaired of both sexes
have votes)—to debate on matters of importance.
As far as we know and can understand the
objects of these assemblages, the tribe is
summoned to decide whether a sickly bird is so
sickly as to be beyond hope of recovery, and
therefore to be put out of its misery, they having
no doctors among them; whether an interloper
from a neighbouring colony has not violently or
slyly endeavoured to establish himself among
them; or whether he has not committed some
other offence against the lex non scripta of their
community which calls for reprobation or punishment.
At all events, something marvellously
like a trial takes place, with a judge or presiding
officer, and the whole community for the jurors.
The prisoner, looking dejected, penitent, and
woebegone, is perched in the middle. A series
of caw-cawings ensues, which, as Lord
Dundreary might say, "no fellow can understand,"
but which cannot be otherwise than intelligible
to the sachems and members of the corvine
tribe—or why should the sounds be uttered?—
and which, protracted sometimes for twenty or
thirty minutes, or even for an hour, results in
a decision of some kind. If the defendant
flies away comfortably with the judge and
jury at the conclusion of the council, we
have a right to suppose that he has been
acquitted. If, on the contrary, as often happens,
the whole tribe pounce upon him with beak and
claw, and peck him to death, screeching and caw-
cawing all the while, we must suppose, on the
same principle, that he has been found guilty of
some crime or other—perhaps of being
hopelessly unwell—sentenced to death, and executed
accordingly. If there be thought in these
matters among the birds, is it not right, even
according to the theory of Mr. Max Müller and
the other philosophers, to suppose that there
is language also? And if a stray rook or
crow happened to make its way into the
Central Criminal Court while a trial was pending,
and perched himself, like Edgar Poe's raven,
on the top of a bookcase or the cross-beam of a
door, and listened attentively to the pleadings,
to the examination of the witnesses, and the
judge's charge, without understanding a word
that was said, would Mr. Crow or Mr. Rook
be justified, if he could get back to his comrades
in the woods, in asserting that men had no
articulate language?

When sparrows quarrel among themselves on
a marital or amorous question, and all the
branches of a tree resound with the angry and
recriminatory twitterings, do not these sparrows
talk? And when swallows assemble, at the close
of summer, preparatory to their annual migration
to the translucent waters and the ever-green