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impossible at first to believe that the birds themselves were not 
there. It is almost needless to say I made quite certain 
that it was the sedgewarbler which produced them all. The 
odd thing about it was that we have no nightingales in this 
parish, (Bloxham) but it might have heard them in a pre- 
vious year elsewhere. The other birds imitated are all 
common. The sedgewarbler does carry notes from year to 
year, because I heard one once giving the notes of Ray’s wag- 
tail very accurately, immediately on the arrival of the 
former in spring. I noticed this because, although the sedge- 
warbler always imitates a good many birds, I never before 
heard it produce this particular note.” 
In a subsequent letter he adds that he must have heard 
thousands of these birds. 
My records of the sedgewarbler’s song are somewhat 
- similar to those made by Mr Aplin. 
I have observed many instances of variation; not only in 
musical species. A male house-sparrow living near my bedroom 
took up with a note like the “twit” of the chaffinch, but very 
loud ; it appeared to be a kind of shout; and the bird continued 
_ to utter it during about two weeks. He seemed to be very 
_ pleased with the performance ; while chirping he looked about 
with an air of consequence. I have twice heard a chaffinch, 
_ once at Stroud, and once at Dursley, utter many times in slow 
_ succession a cry so closely like the common call, “chissick,” of 
_ the pied wagtail, that I was for a short while completely 
_ deceived. At Chalford, on May 31st, 1890, I heard a chaffinch 
interrupt its song with a phrase exactly like the full song of a 
-greenfinch, which then repeatedly sang near it. 
; Mr A. H. Macpherson has heard great tits in Scotland 
_ utter the “ pink, pink” ery of the chaffinch; in Gloucestershire 
they have the same cry, and I have heard it uttered by five 
of them which were fighting together. 
Birds vary their songs, not only towards imitating the 
notes of others, but also in intervals of pitch, constructing as 
_ it were, a kind of music, which is, I believe, often derived by 
imitation from musical notes heard in the gurgling of streams, 
or sometimes from human music. A friend who is much 
