(5) The _auspicia ex tripudiis_ were signs given by the feeding of tame birds (_aves internuntii Jovis_)—generally domestic fowls. If, while they ate, something fell from their mouths (_tripudium solistimum_), still more if the falling object made a ringing noise (_sonivium_), the sign was taken as an assent of the gods to the business in hand. This mode of augury was convenient for two reasons. It was always available; the birds could be taken about in cages under the custody of their keepers and interpreters of their acts, the _pullarii_. Hence it was the mode of augury specially favoured in the camp, and the sacred chickens were the invariable attendants of a Roman army. Again, the favourable sign might be so easily gained. The irate Roman admiral, who threw his chickens that would not eat into the sea, lacked the patience to wring the wished-for omen from them by protracted hunger, or by feeding them with porridge which they could not swallow with sufficient rapidity.[689] The auspices were at first an accompaniment of the _imperium_; later, when they became an attribute of the whole patrician magistracy, their importance varied with the _potestas_ of the magistrate. Officials with _imperium_ were said to possess _maxima auspicia_, and the pro-magistrates were naturally included in this list, for the auspices were as necessary in war as in peace; those of the censors, on account of the importance of this office, were reckoned _maxima_, although the occasions on which they were taken were so unique that they were not brought into the same category as those of the consuls and praetors; those of the lower magistrates, aediles and quaestors, were called _minora_.[690] This was little more than a formal difference, had reference merely to the importance of the respective spheres of operation, for which observations were made, and did not determine the kinds of auspices that might be taken by each magistrate.