203 EXPERIMENTS IN SONG. 



ascertaining how far this change of song might he effected, and 

 the results at which he arrived certainly show that the influence 

 of education is very great. 



Thus he tells us that he educated nestling Linnets under the 

 three best singing Larks, the Skylark, Woodlark, and Titlark, 

 and in each case the young birds adhered entirely not to the song 

 of the Linnet but to that of their instructors. Jn the case of the 

 Linnet that had learned the Titlark's song, he tried if the note 

 could be again changed, for this purpose leaving the bird in 

 a room with two common Linnets which were in full song, for 

 four months ; but not a passage was borrowed from the new in- 

 structors, the Titlark-Linnet continuing steadfastly to the song 

 that it first learned. Other cases are mentioned that of a 

 Linnet which learned the song of an African Vengolina so per- 

 fectly that it was impossible to distinguish the song of the teacher 

 from that of the taught of a Goldfinch that learnt of a Wren 

 of a SparroV that acquired the joint song of the Linnet and the 

 Goldfinch and of a Redcap that studied under a Nightingale. 

 In this last case, however, the learner was not so apt as some of 

 the others ; for after at first breaking down he ultimately sang 

 three parts in four of the song of the Nightingale, and the rest 

 what the bird-catchers call rubbish, or no particular note what- 

 ever. 



Mr. Barrington states that to be certain that a nestling will not 

 have even the call of its species, it should be taken from the nest 

 when only a day or two old, because, though the young birds can- 

 not see till the seventh day, they can hear from the moment they 

 are hatched, and that as the call-note of the parents announces 

 the arrival of food, that would be the first sound the young birds 

 would learn. He also admits " that a great deal depends upon 

 circumstances, and perhaps caprice in the scholar," and that no 

 general rule or inference can be laid down as to the result of such 

 experiments. 



The most remarkable cases of variation as the result of training 

 are those in which the young bird acquires, not the song of 

 another bird, but fragmentary snatches of human speech. A 

 case of this sort is mentioned by Mr. Barrington, in which a 

 Linuet which had been taken from the nest when only two or 

 three days old, learned almost to articulate the words pretty loy, 

 w'thout acquiring either the note or the call of any bird whatever* 



