CHAP. 



end of his tether. In South America there is a little 

 bird {Furnarius cunimlarius) which makes its nest 

 in a horizontal burrow in the ground, said to be often 

 nearly six feet long. These birds have been known 

 to burrow again and again into a mud wall with a 

 view to nesting there, and were no doubt surprised 

 when they came to daylight on the other side. 

 Yet they had flown over the wall, and had had man)' 

 opportunities of seeing, its small thickness before 

 they set to work. 1 In the same way with a stupid 

 persistence one of Mrs. Brightwcn's pet starlings 

 continued to search for grubs in every corner of the 

 drawing-room. The intelligence, however, comes 

 oftener to our notice than the stupidity. 



Song. 



Daines Barrington took three Linnets, when quite 

 young, from the nest, and put them with different 

 foster-mothers, selecting three with easily recognis- 

 able notes — the Skylark, the Woodlark, and Titlark or 

 Meadow Pipit — and each, he maintained, learnt and 

 adhered to the song which it heard in the days of its 

 early youth. The Linnet educated by the Titlark was 

 afterwards put with other Linnets, but it never unlearnt 

 the Titlark song. Daines Barrington was one of the 

 correspondents of Gilbert White, of Selborne, and 

 these experiments were made in the latter half of 

 the last century. More recent investigators have 

 not, as a rule, been led to the same conclusion. Mr. 



1 See Darwin's Journal of Researches (Minerva Library 

 edition), p. 69. 



