2i8 THE STORY OF THE BIRDS 



remarkable at the period when a species re- 

 sumes its voice after months of silence, and in 

 the maiden efforts of young individuals. All 

 young birds are generally indifferent songsters, 

 the art having to be learnt with considerable 

 effort or practice ; whilst some fully adult indi- 

 viduals, of probably every singing species, are 

 much finer musicians than others, the song 

 evidently improving with the age of the bird 

 up to a certain period. Song, we should say, 

 is almost entirely confined to the male sex ; in 

 some cases female birds have been known to 

 sing, but their performance is generally confined 

 to the utterance of a few twittering notes, and 

 which probably represent what was once the 

 best performance of the male at an earlier 

 period in the history of the species — the crude 

 beginning of a song which he has eventually 

 developed into music of entrancing sweetness. 



Now comes the question, whether birds sing 

 by Instinct or by Imitation ? The belief is a 

 wide one, that young song-birds are hatched 

 with an inherited ability to sing like their parents; 

 able without tuition or experience to warble 

 off the song characteristic of their species when 

 the proper season arrives. This is an utterly 

 erroneous assumption, with not a single scrap 



