Imitation. \ 75 



which during ten minutes' singing imitated the notes of 

 no less than thirty-two different species of birds found in 

 the same locality. Mr. Chapman adds that this was a 

 phenomenal performance, and one he had never heard 

 approached, for, in his experience, many mocking-birds 

 have no notes but their own, and good mockers are 

 exceptional.* It would be interesting to gain further 

 information of the conditions under which good mockers 

 are developed. Is the sequence of imitative strains always 

 similar in the same individual? Or does he recombine 

 them in new order ? There would seem to be here a field 

 for careful experiment and observation. 



Our common English jay has the reputation of being 

 a consummate imitator, sometimes of strange sounds. 

 Montagu says that the low song of one individual was 

 interspersed with sounds imitative of the bleating of a 

 lamb, the mewing of a cat, the note of the kite or buzzard, 

 the hooting of an owl, and the neighing of a horse t 

 Bewick describes how a jay imitated the sound of a saw 

 so well as to cause much surprise, the day being Sunday. 

 And a correspondent in the Magazine of Natural Histori; 

 — he may have been of Irish extraction! — says that one 

 imitated the goldfinch's song " most inimitably " (!), and 

 also the neighing of a horse.f 



One more example among wild birds must suffice. Mr. 

 Warde Fowler, in his " Summer Studies of Birds and 

 Books," J gives a quotation from the diary in which he noted 

 the performance in Switzerland of a marsh warbler. " I 

 am now writing," he says, " in a cool spot between the 

 allotments and the Aar, and listening to the marsh-warbler, 



' "Birds of Eastern North America," p. 378. 



t These cases are taken from Yarrell, " British Birds," 2nd edit. vol. ii. 

 p. 122. 



t Pages 80, 81. 



