231 



While I am not prepared to conclude that the 

 Grosbeaks would not have built a nest, if furnished 

 with more commodious quarters and nearer like the 

 condition of affairs that exists out of doors, I conclude 

 that so far as nest-building in cages is concerned they 

 are unable to accomplisli anything. So far as the 

 song is concerned I believe that they inherit the call- 

 notes of both pleasure and fear, but that the song of 

 the males was an imitation of the song of a bird that 

 strongly impressed them during the period when they 

 were cultivating this secondary sexual characteristic. 



Princeton Univp:rsity. 



August Wi, 1904. 



IRevicw. 



'' Field Book of Wild Birds and iheir Miisicr 

 (vSecoiid Notice). 



thp: song of birds. 



>^^^ R. Shuyler Mathews must have expended 

 I I / a vast amount of labour to bring this work 

 ) --*^^ to so successful a completion, and no one 

 with any appreciation of sweet sounds can 

 look through the pages without a feeling of admira- 

 tion for the patience and skill that he has brought to 

 bear upon his subject. 



The book is beautifully printed b\^ the Knicker- 

 bocker press, strange to many English readers, and 

 includes — beside the preface, introduction, and a 

 good index — a cleverly - written chapter on music 

 notation, which the Author has called "A Musical 

 Key." There are several coloured plates (which 

 make pretty pictures, anyway), and a glossarj- of terms 

 used with the bird-songs which are " set to music" — 

 as the unscientific would say. The text is printed on 



