280 HABITS OP BIRDS. 



where it could not hear any of its own species; yet 

 when it was grown, its song- was not distinguish- 

 able from those in a wild state. Could it have ac- 

 quired these notes, while in the nest, from the parent 

 bird, in a similar way to what Dr. Darwin supposed 

 infants to acquire a taste for Hogarth's line of beauty 

 by fondling on their mothers' bosom*? and could it 

 have retained this musique de berceau (cradle music) 

 in its memory for more than six months without ever 

 attempting, as the birds'-men express it, even to 

 record. There is one curious, though very anoma- 

 lous fact, which might be adduced in support of this 

 view. The celebrated Dr. Rush of Philadelphia was 

 called to visit the Countess of L L L who was 

 in a high fever. In her delirium, she uttered a num- 

 ber of outlandish speeches, which one of the attend- 

 ants recognised to be pure Welsh. The Doctor was 

 struck with the singularity of the circumstance, as 

 the Countess, he was told, did not understand a word 

 of Welsh. On inquiry, however, he found that she 

 had been nursed by a Welsh woman, but had been 

 removed before she could articulate a word, and had 

 not heard Welsh spoken from that time till she had 

 been seized with the fever f. But a solitary and 

 anomalous fact like this will not authorize us to 

 conclude that the young skylark retained in like 

 manner the song of its field nurse J." 



The theorists who maintain that the songs of birds 

 are acquired by individual imitation, find no little 

 difficulty in accounting for the uniformity which 

 usually prevails among the notes of those of the same 

 species. They tell us that the young birds learn the 

 song of the parent birds by associating exclusively 



* Zoonomia, xvi. c. 1. p. 201. 

 f American Museum, July, 1787. 



| J. Rennie on the Singing of Birds, Edinb, Mag. Jan. 1819, 

 p. 10, 



