BIRDS TRAINED TO PERFORM 139 



each year, and only a thousand or two bullfinches. 

 The trade, however, is slowly reviving. In 1921 

 several shipments, each of five thousand or more 

 canaries, arrived in New York from various Euro- 

 pean countries. The prospects of 1922 are even 

 brighter. 



Although bullfinches and canaries are by far 

 the finest trained song-birds in existence, there 

 is a multitude of untrained cage-birds whose 

 native voices are as sweet. The notes of the 

 moriche oriole have no rival for timbre; the song 

 of the bulbul has caused Persian poets to weep 

 in ecstasy. Without going further into detail, we 

 have the babblers, the European blackbirds, the 

 solitaires of Mexico, the song-thrushes, the night- 

 ingales, the sky-larks, the weavers, the Southern 

 troopials, the minas of the East, and an almost 

 inexhaustible list of others, any one of which 

 would make a German "schoolmaster" tremble 

 for his honors and put a " bird-organ " to shame. 

 But these birds are rarities and difficult to pro- 

 cure. 



2 

 Talking Birds 



Following close after song-birds in popular 

 praise are those species which can be taught to 

 imitate the human voice. Every person is fa- 



