APRIL 111 



At Sidcup, in November 1895, a fowl habitually drawled the 

 following : 



A cock-crow is usually of this character : 





Mr. Witchell lays much stress on the imitative character 

 of the song of many birds. Who can doubt it after 

 listening to the varied repertory of the starling as he sits 

 on the housetop in winter, running over all the silenced 

 summer voices the cawing of rooks in the ashtops, the 

 clucking of coots in the reedy mere, the melancholy pipe 

 of the golden plover, the tremulous wail of the curlew, all 

 intermingled with snatches of sweeter melodies ? 



Last summer one of the underkeepers who reared my 

 young pheasants used to summon them with a very 

 peculiar, not unmusical, whistle, such as I never heard 

 before. A blackbird, whose mate nested near the 

 pheasant- hut, picked up this whistle, and mimicked it so 

 closely that it was impossible to distinguish between the 

 calls of the feathered and the unfeathered biped. 



But bird-song is not all imitative. ' It is a wise child 

 that knows its own father,' but it must be a supernatural 

 cuckoo that can identify its proper sire. And if it did, it 

 could hardly learn from that source the characteristic cry 

 of the race, for the male cuckoo has cracked his voice 

 before his offspring has much chance of hearing it. Still 

 more obscure is the manner in which the vocal powers of 



