152 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. 



the problem would be solved. But this experiment 

 would, I think, be as impracticable as the one which 

 Herodotus ascribes to the king of Egypt who shut 

 away two infants from all voices, to see what 

 language they would speak. The nearest approach 

 to such a case that I have met with is recorded by 

 Mr. Hudson. He tells us that he once observed a 

 tame Tinamou (a bird of the pampas) which had been 

 taken from its parents just as it had issued from its 

 egg, and which was still only half-grown, yet sang 

 the song of its own species perfectly for an hour 

 together every evening. With large birds of this 

 kind the experiment is possible, because they can run 

 about and feed themselves directly they break their 

 shell ; but the young of our song-birds cannot do so, 

 and it would be almost hopeless to try and keep 

 them alive out of the nest when only a day or two old. 

 All that I am contending for is that there must 

 be an inherited tendency in birds to learn easily the 

 songs of their parents. That they do readily imitate, 

 and even that they are, in some cases, carefully in- 

 structed, I can hardly venture to doubt. Not long 

 ago a lady wrote to me from Kome a very explicit 

 and apparently truthful account of a lesson given by 

 an old Nightingale to a young bird, at which she 

 had herself been present. She said that the teacher 

 repeated each phrase until the pupil had it perfect. 1 

 1 See below, p. 189. 



