In one aspect he is altogether admirable--as the comrade of Britain's soldiers and sailors in times of war. Wherever our ships go the sparrow goes, and as the troops march he accompanies the army as a camp-follower, but finding his own rations. He is established in Afghanistan, where he went with Roberts and Stewart, and in Zululand where Evelyn Wood and Buller showed him the way. Like the Roman eagles, he is the ensign of victorious advance, and should I ever chance to go there, I expect to find him at home, by right of arms and the men, at Buluwayo. As they crossed the Cabul river and the Buffalo and the Nile with our forces, claiming at once from the natives privileges of conquest which our generals hesitated to assert, so no doubt they have crossed the Shangani, and among the rock-kranzes and kraals of the Matabele now rear the young which, under other conditions, might have lived in Covent Garden and died within sound of Bow-bells. CHAPTER IV BIRD-VOICES--THE CORN-CRAKE--THE BLACK-TAP--THE TURTLE-DOVE--CARPENTER-BIRDS--THE NUTHATCH--THE WRYNECK--THE GREAT TIT--THE LETTER-BOX TIT OF ROWFANT CHAPTER IV "_Clam'ring Craiks at close of day_ _'Mang fields o' flowering clover gay._" BURNS. Which bird-voice in Nature is the most expressive? Is it the ringdove's happy crooning in the green depths of the woodland? or the nightingale's solitary lamenting under the cold moon? Some might say the fierce, ringing cry of the Highlanders' eagle among the clouds; others the soothing, homely clamour of the social rooks in the old Hampshire elms. Or is it some other? For myself, I think I would pass them all by, significant utterances though they are, like the cuckoo's tell-tale note, the sparrow's familiar chirp, the glad carol of the skylark, the placid vespers of the blackbird, and the joyous matins of the thrush; pass all these by, and many others, and choose--the cry of the corn-crake. Have you ever noticed that while you listen to the cuckoo calling, other birds seem to be silent? The cuckoo, for the time, is the only voice in the sky. So it is with the corn-crake. When you hear it, it is all alone. A short while ago the whitethroat was pouring out its little heart in an evening-song, and from the copse came the chuckle of the roosting pheasant. A night-jar had been purring over the golden furze that grows up from among the purple heather, and on the other side of the spinney an owl, on soft white lazy wing, had gone by crying to its mate. Queer little noises, "flung out of their holes" by rabbits, and others just as queer, but more inexplicable, from hedgerow and ditch, had told you that animal-life was on foot and a-wing, and as you sate on the stile, in the break of the high hedge, and saw the steam rising out of the clover, and the white moths, "ermine" and "ghost," flash or flutter among the sweet bloom, it seemed as if everything was abroad, the day-things not yet asleep, the night-things already astir.