568 Origin of the Song of Birds* 



he would know that birds have an innate organ of tune, 

 which will, of course, lie dormant when the bird is not 

 excited to exercise it, as in the case of the nightingale men- 

 tioned by Mr. Sweet, and as shown in the experiments of 

 Daines Barrington (Pennant's British Zoology^ vol. ii. Ap- 

 pendix) on the sparrow and linnet, which were put into 

 rooms where they neither saw nor heard any other bird : no 

 wonder if they did not sing ! A man who had been shut up 

 in a room by himself from his infancy, as in the case of Caspar 

 Hauser [see The Penny Magazine^ Nos. 118, 119, and 120.: 

 the case of " Peter the Wild Boy, caught in the Woods near 

 Aveyron" as detailed in a work of this title, may be added], 

 would, of course, not be able to speak a word, having no 

 occasion for language : but place several persons together in 

 a similar situation, and there is no doubt that they would 

 make out a language of some kind or other, as they would 

 have the desire of communicating, and possess the necessary 

 organs for accomplishing it, within themselves. It is the 

 same with birds; the parents do not sing: while the young 

 remain with them, nor are they taught by their parents. They 

 are first invited to sing by the genial warmth of spring, as 

 well as for the purpose of attracting a mate ; and emulation 

 and an innate organ of imitation doubtless assist in giving 

 the bird a desire to sing. The first of these makes them 

 cheerful ; the last two give them the desire of doing as the 

 other choristers of the woods do ; and an innate organ of tune 

 dictates their song. In the experiments before alluded to, 

 none of these could be felt. If birds only learn to chirp and 

 sing by hearing their parents chirp and sing, how does it 

 happen that the duckling and chicken are able to chirp, which 

 they begin to do even before the shell is cracked. Surely it 

 will not be maintained that their mother taught them ! As 

 Mr. Thugarton very justly remarks (III. 145.), " if birds 

 were not ' true to their song,* we might hear strange ano- 

 malies. The chattering starling might entrance us with Phi- 

 lomela's strains, or the hoary-headed daw might, in midwinter, 

 surprise us with ' the welcome voice of the harbinger of 

 spring.' " But it is now time to finish these observations, 

 which may, perhaps, be tiresome to your correspondents, as 

 what I have endeavoured to prove may have been long familiar 

 to most of them : but, in this as in many other cases, phreno- 

 logy clears up every thing; whereas, without its aid, the dis- 

 pute might be maintained on both sides with apparently equal 

 plausibility. For farther observations on this subject, see 

 Mudie's British Naturalist, i. 2S,^Sept. 10.1834. \_Post' 

 mark, Burton on Trent.'] 



