The daily morning journal and courier., 1899-07-15
LINGO OF THE COOP.

It is a strange language that human ears learn readily to comprehend. For the most part it is instinctive, A fuzzy toddler six hours out of the shell has five distinct calls. The first and loudest of
 them is the lost note, uttered when he
 loses sight of his mother or finds him
 self out in the cold It is loud and very shrill. The second, the hunger note, is as shrill but more plaintive. As soon as eating begins it changes to a sort of satisfied chittering.
 After eating they grow sleepy, and cry to be lowered. The note is some what like that of hunger, with a pe- culiar tremolo breaking it in the mid dIe Very rarely do the mothers disre- gard it, though they may be eager to go foragng over grass plots or down hedgeroWs.
 The fifth note, the chir-r of fright or astonishment, is the quaintest of all. The chicks themselves appear to find something in it distinctly humorous. When they are a few days old, if big wriggling worm or fat, juicy bug be thrown to them with their usual food, they will first draw away from it, chir- r-ring jn concert then after eyeing it a minute, seize upon it and toss 1t about with faint, immature chuckling cackles This chir-r develops at last in the grat- ing call of warning, at sound of which from their mothers even the youngest scatter and scuttle to cover.
 Anything, a bird, a kite, even very 1Io c1i1ir,y in l,a c1yT overhead, will evoke this warning cry Let one hen sound it and every other will take it up. Often, oftener than not indeed, the alarm is false one, but centuries of hawks have impressed upon each feather mind that danger cometh out of the air" and they govern them selves accordingly.
 Everybody knows how hens chuck to their broods, but it may be news to many that, though hundred hens may be clucking in the same inclosure, the voice of each will be individual and un- mistakable to her immediate family A chick just out of the nest may not be able to discriminate, but let him follow for a day and he is past making mis- takes.
 Even more wonderful is the hens ability to differentiate her brood from all the rest With spiteful, ill-tem- pered fowls this often leads to pitiful barnyard tragedies. An intruder, feed ing peacefully among chicks of his own size, shape and color, has often been slain with one single blow of a sharp and angry beak.
 A cock, especially game cock, or one of Spanish breed, has a wonderful va rety of crows. By means of them in- deed he runs the whole gamut of ex- pressor-hope fear, defiance, triumph love, hate rage, vanity, and a fine, in- effable cOnceit.
 It is the hens without families, though that are the true barnyard gossips. Any fine day. outside moulting time you may see them, standing in groups. their heads close together, chuckling and chattering like so many blackbirds, or else wallowing in light earth, pecking lightly as they scratch and wallow and evidently finding it good sport to throw dirt over each other.
 A hen, save when setting will never wallow alone. And when setting she is not normal, but a ragged unkempt and very ill-tempered shadow of herself. | scowling and pecking at whatever comes near her.-Boston Daily Globe.