387 



which we are to consider subHspecies and local races, as they have 

 been called at different times, is one that can be taken up by none 

 better than the local naturalist.* 



On the subject of song it may be remarked that, though in the 

 case ofwhat are usually called song-birds, each species ordinarily 

 keeps to its own note, and which is often characteristic of it, yet 

 certain variations in that note may be noticed in different localities. 

 Practised bird-catchers can often tell by the song the exact county 

 in which some of oUr native cage birds have been taken. I 

 remember a blackbird at large when I lived in Cambridgeshire, 

 whose song was so peculiar that I could at once distinguish it from 

 all the other blackbirds in the neighbourhood ; this continued for 

 three years, at the end of which period I missed it, it having 

 probably met with its death. In any similar case that might occur 

 to the local naturalist it would be interesting to discover the nest 

 of the particular individual, and rear the young brood with the 

 view of ascertaining whether their song was like that of the parent 

 bird or not. It is quite certain that many birds acquire their song 

 by imitation. Wallace says "that young birds never have the 

 song peculiar to their species if they have not heard it, whereas 

 they acquire very easily the song of almost any other bird with 

 which they are associated, "t When birds are kept in cages, too, 

 they not unfrequently lose in part the song they have when at 

 liberty, or it is mixed up with that of other birds in cages near 

 them. I remember many years back a nightingale in a cage kept 

 by Mr. Yarrell, which it was quite disappointing to hear, the song 

 being so little like that of the wild bird in its native haunts.! 

 Some birds, like the great titmouse and reed warbler, have a 

 great variety of notes. The peculiar note of the former, like the 

 whetting of a saw, so often heard in the early part of the year, was 

 noticed by White, though attributed by him, I think erroneously, 

 to the marsh tit,§ but it has many other notes besides, which it 



* See the whole suhject of the variation of plumage in birds, treated at 

 much length in Darwin's "Descent of Man," vol. ii., eh. xiii., pp. 71-98; 

 also oh. xiv., pp. 124-153; also oh. xvi., especiaUy "Rules or Classes of 

 Cases," pp. 187-223. f Natural Selection, p. 220. + See also Wallace, 

 Nat. Select., p. 222. ^ Nat. Hist., Selb., Letter xl. to Pennant 



