Correspondence, Notes, etc.



179



the House-Martin, excepting that the top was entirely open. I have also

shown that in a crowded aviary, where they were liable to interference from

other birds, both Goldfinches and Grey Singing-finches built their nests in

a Hartz bird-cage, from which one bar had been removed to enable them to

enter it; thus having only one small opening to defend: whereas, had they

built in a bush, they would have been liable to disturbance from all sides.


Undoubtedly also birds are capable, in a greater or less degree,

according to their conditions of life, of experiencing and expressing the

same emotions and passions which we feel ourselves : the manner in which

such emotions primarily originated does not for a moment negative this

fact, any more than the smile with which we greet a friend (which is said to

have originated in the snarling exhibition of the canines by our ill-tempered

anthropoid ancestors) disproves our pleasure in the present far more

philanthropic generation.


Returning to the original point respecting the imitation of the parent

nest by the young, it seems never to have occurred to Mr. Dixon that the

building was completed long before the young were even hatched ; so that,

in the first place, it would have been necessary for them to discover this

important matter for themselves ; in the second place they could never

have seen more than a portion of the interior of the nest, with the outer

rim in the case of a cup-sliaped structure, and these parts only while in

their sleepy unintelligent babyhood. As we know, the young bird 110

sooner begins to take an active interest in the outside world than it springs

from the nest, and in many instances not only never glances at the exterior

of it, but never again returns to it. How then could it possibly impress

upon its memory the bare outline of the structure ? The whole notion of

imitation is preposterous, and could not for a moment be accepted as a fact

by anybody who had taken the trouble to study the habits of birds,

had watched them building, and had used the reason with which all

intelligent human beings, in common with many less highly organized

animals, are gifted. A. G. BuTi,ER.



AVICULTURAL NOTES FROM FLORENCE : TANAGERS

BREEDING.


Sir,—M y collection of birds increases rapidly. I have a fine pair of

Goura or Crowned Pigeons and three Nicobar ones.


I also have received some Tanagers—the many-coloured one, the

crimson one, the Euphonia violacect, the Euphonia viridis, some fine Blue¬

shouldered Tanagers, a Dacnis cayana, and some long-beaked small green

birds with bluish heads, which I have been unable to identify: they might be

hens of Dacnis cayana but have longer and slighter beaks, more like the

Ccereba cyanea, of which I at first supposed them to be hens, but am still

uncertain : the dealers call them Vert-bleu. Also a red-backed Brazilian

Starling with a long yellow beak.



