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interested in birds informed me that a parrot in his possession 
learned to whistle the four notes of the common chord, (Ex. 7); 
and that a wild starling which lived upon the same premises 
reproduced the notes, being heard by several people to utter 
them in the same time and with the same accent as the 
parrot. 
Mr Arthur H. Macpherson informs me of a starling which 
sang near the Quadrangle at Oxford, and which not only 
imitated the sound of the chapel bell, but also swayed its body 
from side to side in imitation of the movements of the 
bell. 
In 1888 a pair of blackbirds reared their brood in a nest 
within a few feet of my dining-room window; and the young 
must have heard for an hour or two every day the notes of a 
piano, and sometimes those of other instruments which were 
played there. 
In 1889, in the garden, a blackbird born in 1888, sang 
hardly more than one phrase, which he would repeat for 
minutes together without variation. (Ex. 8). 
Mr F. A. Chambers, of the Thrupp House, Stroud, when 
staying with a friend, was told that in the garden a blackbird 
sang the first two bars of “‘Two lovely black eyes,” a song 
which was frightfully popular a few years ago. Mr Chambers 
saw and heard the bird sing them so incessantly as to be un- 
pleasant. (Ex. 9). 
The occurrence of such instances as these is very frequent, 
and the recital of them might be much extended; I trust, 
however, that I have said enough to show that bird song is a 
subject which hitherto has been undeservedly neglected, and to 
suggest the value of vocal utterance in birds, as bearing on the 
theory of a common origin of species, and an equally wide 
subject, mind in animals. 
The following examples are referred to in the preceding 
paper. They are intended to represent intervals rather than 
actual pitch, which, in the cries to which they relate, is always 
an octave higher (sometimes much more) than the notes here 
given. They should be whistled with the mouth. 
