NOVEMBER. 275 



Always two, and sometimes three broods have been raised. 

 It is evident that the pair which first occupied the box 

 can not be proved to have subsequently nested in the 

 same quarters, but there is, I maintain, so great a degree of 

 probability that they did, that it is of value in determin- 

 ing that other phase of bird life permanent mating. The 

 question hinges largely upon whether we can or not 

 recognize individual birds by their actions. This claim 

 has, as a matter of course, been ridiculed by some, and 

 doubted by almost every one ; and yet I am by no means 

 convinced that it is a fallacy. My friend Mr. Thomas 

 Proctor, of Brooklyn, has published some very pertinent 

 remarks upon the subject, from which I quote as fol- 

 lows: 



" A gentleman with whom I am acquainted has a 

 fondness for cage-birds amounting almost to a passion. 

 The European linnet (Fringilla linota) is his favorite, 

 and in the course of years he has kept as pets several 

 hundreds of them. He has assured me that individual 

 traits in this species are as apparent to him as such traits 

 are to him in human beings. In those birds, he says, such 

 traits are manifest in form, motion, manner, expression of 

 face, in voice, and even in moral characteristics. When 

 standing at the outside of the closed door of the room 

 in which he keeps his pets, he will be able to recognize 

 the voice of any particular one of his fifteen or so linnets 

 by its distinctive quality, usually at the first chirp or note 

 given, and when in the room with them, he can recognize 

 any particular one of them by characteristics shown in 

 manner of motion, and most generally at the first hop of the 

 bird from one perch to another. ' And there is an indi- 

 viduality,' he contends, * shown in a bird's mere attitude 

 in resting.' . . . 



" In my experience with cage-birds, distinctive individu- 

 al traits are more readily to be perceived in the European 



