THE PLAY OF ANIMALS. 199 



tied very clearly the first strain of " God save the 

 Queen." * 



The European bullfinch, whose natural song the 

 Thuringians call " rolling a wheelbarrow," though it 

 has great variety, readily learns to whistle songs. The 

 elder Brehm says of it: "I have heard the red linnet 

 and the black thrush whistle many tunes not badly, 

 but no other bird attains a purity, softness, and rich- 

 ness of tone equal to the bullfinch. It is incredible 

 how far he can be trained. He often learns the melody 

 of whole songs and produces them Avith such a flutelike 

 tone that one never tires of hearing him." Herr Theo- 

 dor Franck, of Berlin, writes that his bullfinch was quite 

 a skilful whistler. " But the accomplishment that en- 

 deared him to us is his having learned to repeat the 

 words that my wife and I address to him as he hangs 

 in our chamber. * Little man, are you there ? ^ or * Cour- 

 age, Mannikin, courage.^ The red linnet has a wonder- 

 ful facility in imitating the songs of strange birds, as 

 well as real melodies and discords. The crested lark 

 sometimes learns as many as four different tunes, and 

 mimics birds and animals as well. 



Count Gourcy writes to the elder Brehm of the 

 bimting of southern Europe: "Its call resembles, in 

 all but one deep tone, the decoy cry of the crested 

 lark. Its song is magnificent, and really extraordinary 

 for its variety. It possesses the rare power of chang- 

 ing the quality of its voice at will, producing now high, 

 shrill notes and then tones so clear as to astonish the 

 hearer. Usually some strains of the nightingale's song 

 follow the first call, then comes the long-drawn, deep 

 cry of the blackbird, in which the familiar ' Tack, tack ' 



* Riiss, loc. cif , p. 174. 

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