14:2 RAMBLES ABOUT HOME. 



will be left him, but, in spite of all this, he will cheer his 

 brooding mate with his choicest songs ; singing, I have 

 sometimes thought, with greater fervor from the con- 

 sciousness that his wife is too busy at home to bother 

 him. 



But what has all this to do with language ? Just this, 

 that it depends on the manner in which things go on 

 between the birds, whether the chirps and twitters are 

 low, musical, and deliberately uttered, or whether they 

 are shrill, cacophonous, and so rapidly repeated that the 

 birds, if unseen, can not be recognized by their voices. 



But it may be urged that, to constitute language, or 

 something akin to it, these chirps and twitters must be 

 shown to convey ideas. Can one bird tell another any- 

 thing ? it will be asked. To this I answer that, if any one 

 has watched a colony of brooding grakles, or paid close 

 attention to a flock of crows, he has probably satisfied 

 himself upon this point. Crows have twenty-seven dis- 

 tinct cries, calls, or utterances, each readily distinguishable 

 from the other, and each having an unmistakable con- 

 nection with a certain class of actions ; some of which, as, 

 for instance, the many different notes of the brooding- 

 birds, are only heard at certain seasons. In this connec- 

 tion, it may be added that the intelligence of crows is 

 fully one half greater than that of any other bird in our 

 fauna. Instances of the exercise of much cunning and 



O 



forethought on their part are almost innumerable. 



Let us see, however, if among our singing-birds there 

 is not to be found evidence of an ability to communicate 

 ideas, presumably by the aid of vocal sounds. Here is 

 an occurrence that took place in my presence in the 

 spring of 1872. A pair of cat-birds were noticed carry- 

 ing materials for a nest to a patch of blackberry-briers 

 hard by. To test their ingenuity, I took a long, narrow 



