g6 Rectnt Literature. \^ 



The birds mated with females provided for them, and about the middle 

 of May showed a desire to build nests, and for some time busied them- 

 selves with "abortive attempts at nest-building." They proved unable to 

 successfully adjust the materials supplied to them, and were finally fur- 

 nished with artificial nests. They availed themselves of these, soon 

 completing a lining and beginning to lay. Each female laid a full com- 

 plement, but the eggs were broken by the birds, apparently by accident 

 in their continued efforts to complete the nest structure to their liking. 

 Each female laid another set of eggs, which shared the fate of the first 

 set. Mr. Scott summarizes his observations on this case as follows : 

 "While I am not prepared to conclude that the Grosbeaks would not have 

 built a nest if furnished with more commodious quarters and nearer like 

 the condition of affairs that exist out of doors, 1 conclude that so far as 

 nest-building in cages is concerned they are unable to accomplish any- 

 thing. So far as the song is concerned, I believe that they inherit the 

 call-notes of both pleasure and fear, but that the song of the males was 

 an imitation of a song of a bird that strongly impressed them during 

 the period when they were cultivating this secondary sexual character- 

 istic." 



The account of the young Meadowlarks is less detailed. A male 

 acquired a song "quite dissimilar to that of a wild Meadowlark," and 

 accompanied the performance by what Mr. Scott calls "a parade or dance, 

 analogous to the strut of a turkey-cock." A part of the song consisted 

 of "a silvery whistling sequence of five or six notes rather long drawn 

 out, and given with much precision," which so resembled a part of the 

 song of a European Blackbird confined in the same room, that it was 

 several weeks before Mr. Scott and his assistant were able to identify 

 the real author of the strain. 



In his comment on this case Mr. Scott says : "My conclusion is that 

 birds are influenced in their early lives very strongly by any noise that 

 arrests their attention, even in a wild state, and that this propensity to 

 imitate and differentiate their normal methods of song is greatly exag- 

 gerated under the artificial state wherein they live when in confinement." 

 -J. A. A. 



Scott's Ornithology of Patagonia. — The first fasciculus of the ornitho- 

 logical volume x of the Reports of the Princeton University Expeditions to 



1 J. Pierpont Morgan Publication Fund | — | Reports | of the Princeton 

 University Expeditions | to Patagonia, 1S96-1899 | J. B. Hatcher in Charge | 

 Edited by | William B. Scott | Blair Professor of Geology and Palaeontology, 

 Princeton University | Volume II | Ornithology | Part I. | Rheidae-Sphen- 

 iscidae | By | William Earl Dodge Scott | Princeton University | associated 

 with I R. Bowdler Sharpe | British Museum of Natural Plistory | Princeton, 

 N. J. I The University | Stuttgart | E. Schweizerbart'sche Verlags-Handlung 

 (E. N agele) | 1904. — 4to, pp. 1-112. Issued July 26, 1904. 



