Instances in which the cries of birds had an incontestable and precise signification are numerous; let me refer to a few of the best known.  The cackle of a hen, after having laid an egg and left her nest, is decidedly characteristic.  Her clucking when she is impelled to sit on her eggs, or when she is calling her chicks, is no less demonstrative.  There is not a farmer who does not recognize it and understand it.  In these things we see the relation between the tone of the prating or cluck of the hen and her acts.  But when a nightingale sings all night, or a goldfinch whistles, or a raven croaks, we cannot so easily interpret the significance of their inarticulate sounds.  The finch calls its mate by uttering a few notes followed by a long trill.  Matches of a barbarous character, based on this habit, I were held in the north of France while I was living at Lille, between 1855 and 1860.  I do not know whether they have been suppressed or not, but the laws for the protection of animals ought to take cognizance of them.  The gamesters put out the eyes of the male finches, and made them, thus blinded, compete as singers, for which purpose they brought their cages into proximity.  When the birds heard and recognized one another’s voices, they made their appeal to the female; the one that renewed his amorous trills most frequently, protracted them longest and to the last, gained the prize.  The bird that was declared victor received a medal amid the applause of a large and enthusiastic crowd; and considerable wagers were staked upon the result.  I have heard that these poor blinded birds sometimes fell down exhausted with singing, and kept on calling the absent female till they died, not being willing to yield to a rival, who on his side was also keeping up his equally useless appeals.

These finch contests were suggested after the meaning of the song of the birds was learned.  But when these birds, which are more usually isolated—­whence they have been named Fringilla coelebs, or celibates—­hop around our houses and also utter their amorous trills at another than the mating season, they are evidently not calling the female.  Should we not then seek to determine by the tone whether their call, which is always the same, is amorous or not?

In countries where flocks of turkeys are raised one can learn very quickly from their gobblings when they have captured a hare.  If they meet him standing still or lying down, they form in a circle around him, and, putting their heads down, repeat continually their peculiar cries.  The hare remains quiet, and it is sometimes possible to take him up, terrorized as he is in the midst of the black circle of gobbling beaks and heads.  The language of the turkeys is at that time incontestably significant.  It is warlike, and similar to that of the males when they are fighting.  In the present instance they have joined for war, and they make it on the frightened hare.