1 78 Bird Comrades 



lation of the tongue, by a slight enlargement or contrac- 

 tion of the aperture, and especially by a dexterous control 

 of the air column blown from the lungs. Just so the 

 lyrists of fields and woods pipe their roundels and chan- 

 sons through the chink in their throats, save that in the 

 bird's case the mouth and tongue are anterior to th 

 whistling aperture. I know a young man who has 

 trained himself so as to be able to mimic to perfection the 

 complex songs of the western meadowlark and the car- 

 dinal grosbeak. He does it by whistling. 



Near the lower end of the trachea, just above the lungs, 

 there is a specialized organ of the bird's throat called the 

 syrinx. It is a cylinder formed of bony rings, provided 

 with a mesh, of muscles, and having membranous folds 

 which act as valves upon the two orifices of the bronchi 

 leading to the lungs. Many scientific gentlemen have 

 declared that the syrinx is the voice organ of the birds, 

 the elastic margins of the folds or valves being set to 

 vibrating by the projection of the air from the lungs, and 

 thus producing the varied lays we hear in the outdoor 

 concert. However, Mr. Maurice Thompson who, by the 

 way, found time to do something else besides writing 

 "Alice of OldVincennes," and something just as creditable 

 to his talent, too dissected many birds with special refer- 

 ence to this subject, and gave close attention to birds in 

 the act of singing, both out of doors and in captivity, 

 and I am convinced that he proved the theory of the 

 syringeal origin of bird song to be an erroneous one. 



Only two reasons need be adduced for this conclusion. 



