APPENDIX. 175 
ImITATION. — Contin. 
their song is a mixture; as in the instance which I have before stated of 
the sparrow. I must own, also, that I conceived from the experiment of 
educating the robin under a nightingale, that the scholar would fix upon 
the note which it first heard when taken from the nest ; I imagined, like- 
wise, that if the nightingale had been fully in song, the instruction for a 
fortnight would have been sufficient. I have, however, since tried the 
following experiment, which convinces me so much depends upon cir- 
cumstances and perhaps caprice in the scholar, that no general inference 
or rule can be laid down with regard to either of these suppositions. I 
educated a nestling robin under a woodlark-linnet, which was full in 
song and hung very near to him for a month together; after which the 
robin was removed to another house, where he could only hear a sky- 
lark-linnet. The consequence was that the nestling did not sing a note 
of woodlark (though I afterwards hung him again just above the wood- 
lark-linnet), but adhered entirely to the song of the skylark-linnet.” — 
Barrington, D.: Roy. Soc. of London. Philos, Trans. , 1773, vol. 1xiii, pp. 249-291. 
For contrary opinion, namely that the song of birds is innate, see 
Blackwall, J., in Philos. Mag.and Journal (London),vol. Ixvi., July, 1825. 
An extract from this paper is to be found in Amer. Jour. of Science and 
Arts, vol. x., Feb., 1826, pp. 390-291. — See also Flagg, W.: A Year with 
the Birds, p. 28.—Nicols, A.: Snakes, Marsupials, and Birds (London, 
n. d.), pp. 202-205. 
For power of imitation in the bobolink, see Littell’s Living Age, 
vol. xxix., 1851, p. 312. 
For power of imitation in the crow, see Cabot, J. E.: Our Birds, and 
their Ways. (Aélantic Mo., vol. i., December, 1857, p. 211.) 
The power of imitation is certainly very commonly 
developed among the song-birds. An old bird-fancier (A 
Natural History of English Song-birds, London, 1779), 
shows that a round dozen of choice English songsters were 
known a hundred years ago as accomplished borrowers of 
other birds and of man. 
“ When I say that no living cantatrice can interpret this beautiful old- 
fashioned song [The Last Rose of Summer] with such sweetness and genu- 
ineness of expression as can the bullfinch, I am sure of stating a truth that 
will not be disputed by anybody who has chanced to hear them both.”— 
Austin, G. L.: Friendship of Birds. (Appleton’s Journal, nN. 8. vol. iii., p. 161.) 
