SONGS. 273 



the linnet's song*, adhered entirely to that of their 

 respective instructors. 



" When the note of the titlark linnet was thoroughly 

 fixed, I hung the bird in a room with two common 

 linnets, for a quarter of a year, which were full in 

 song- ; the titlark linnet, however, did not borrow any 

 passage from the linnet's song 1 , but adhered sted- 

 fastly to that of the titlark. 



" I had some curiosity to find out whether a Eu- 

 ropean nestling- would equally learn the note of an 

 African bird ; I therefore educated a young linnet 

 under a Vengolina (Linaria Angolensis, BUISSON), 

 which imitated its African master so exactly, without 

 any mixture of the linnet's song, that it was im- 

 possible to distinguish the one from the other. 



44 This Vengolina linnet was absolutely perfect 

 without ever uttering a single note by which it could 

 have been known to be a linnet. In some of my 

 other experiments, however, the nestling' linnet re- 

 tained the call of its own species, or what the bird- 

 catchers term the linnet's chuckle, from some resem- 

 blance to that word when pronounced. 



" All my nestling linnets were three weeks old 

 when taken from the nest; and by that time they 

 frequently learn their own call from the parent birds, 

 which consists of only a single note. 



44 To be certain, therefore, 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 nestlings cannot see till the seventh day, yet 

 they can hear from the instant they are hatched, and 

 probably, from that circumstance, attend to sounds 

 more than they do afterwards, especially as the call 

 of the parents announces the arrival of their food. 



4 ' I must own that I am not equal myself, nor can 

 I procure any person to take the trouble of breeding 

 up a bird of this age, as the odds against its being 



