THE MOCK BlttD. 1'93 



Various notes und imitative powers 



This bird is common throughout America and 

 Jamaica, but changes its place in the summer, 

 being then seen much more to the northward 

 than in winter. He is the only one of the Ame- 

 rican singing birds that can be compared with 

 those of Europe; and, were it not for the atten- 

 tion that he pays to every sort -of disagreeable 

 noises which tend to debase his best notes, there 

 can be little doubt that he would be fully equal 

 to the song of the nightingale in its whole com- 

 pass. He frequents the dwellings of the Ameri- 

 can farmers; where, sitting on the roof or chim- 

 ney, he sometimes pours forth the most sweet 

 and varied notes imaginable. The Mexicans, on 

 account of his various notes and his imitative 

 powers, call him the bird of four hundred tongues. 

 In the warmer parts of America he sings inces- 

 santly from March to August, both day and 

 night; beginning with his own compositions, 

 and frequently finishing by borrowing from the 

 whole feathered choir. He repeals his tunes 

 with such artful sweetness as to excite both plea- 

 sure and astonishment. It possesses not only 

 natural notes of its own, which are truly musical 

 and solemn ; but it can at pleasure assume the 

 tone of every other animal in the forest, from 

 the humming bird to the eagle, and descending 

 even to the wolf or the raven. One of them 

 confined in a cage has been heard to mimic the 

 mewing of a cat, the chattering of a magpie, and 



