VENTRILOQUIAL AND IMITATIVE POWER OF BIRDS. 71 



only acquire certain notes or bars, which they sometimes 

 incorporate in their own songs, thus making quaint and 

 curious medleys of doubtful quality. Canaries long 

 living in company where they continually hear one 

 another's notes will finally sing very nearly alike, though 

 at first the general characteristics of their songs may 

 have been quite different. 



The mocking-birds excepted, perhaps the song spar- 

 row, oftener than others, mix with their strains notes 

 not belonging to their own songs. I have heard them 

 throw in those of the chcAvink, both at the middle and 

 ending of their songs ; also that of the robin, blue bird, 

 phebe bird, and purple finch. 



jS'ear a creek which is much frequented by water 

 birds, I have heard during the past three summers a 

 sparrow interject in his otherwise fine song the high, 

 sharp notes of the peetweet. Dr. Placzek, in the Pop- 

 ular Science Monthly^ speaks of a yellow thrush taken 

 from the nest and domesticated, which, of its own 

 accord, commenced crowing like a cock. " I sometimes 

 heard, early in the morning, a clear, melodious cock 

 crowing that seemed to come from a distant barn-yard. 

 Going into the library one morning, where the bird was, 

 I sat still in a further corner of the room till things 

 began to get lively in the cage. I could see him with 

 out being seen. Soon he found his voice, and sounded 

 the cock crow which I had so often heard before with- 

 out suspecting its real origin. Had I not seen the 

 bird's mouth open and his throat vibrating, I should 

 still have thought the sound came from a distance. 



