308 Observations on the 
they may substitute for them; but this, I 
believe, has never yet been attempted. 
I have already asserted, that Mr. Barring- 
ton’s conclusions are contrary to common ex- 
perience. I shall now endeavour to establish 
this charge. 
It is well known to most persons who have 
the care and management of poultry, that 
ducks, guinea fowls, &c., hatched under the 
domestic hen, and domestic fowls hatched 
under turkeys, have the calls and_ habits 
peculiar to their species: that this is the 
case also with pheasants and_ partridges, 
brought up under similar circumstances, I 
have had frequent opportunities of observing. 
It is a matter of universal notoriety likewise, 
that all cuckoos of the species canorus, though 
hatched and reared by birds of various de- 
scriptions, have constantly their proper calls.* 
* Mr. Barrington will not allow that the well known cry of the 
cuckoo is a song, because it does not happen to accord with the condi- 
tions of his arbitrary definition; though, to the bird, it answers every 
purpose of a song, as well as the more elaborate effusions of the night- 
ingale and skylark. Mr. Barrington defines a bird’s song to bea suc- 
cession of three or more different notes, which are continued without 
interruption, during the same interval with a musical bar of four croteh- 
ets in an adagio movement, or whilst a pendulum swings four seconds; 
which necessarily excludes the chaffinch, redstart, hedge warbler, wil- 
low wren, and some others, that have always been accounted birds of 
song, as well as thecuckeo, from any pretensions to the title. Per- 
haps it would be more natural, and certainly less exclusive, to apply the 
term song to those notes that are peculiar to the males; yet this defini- 
