XU INSTINCT AND REASON 333 
is taught by each pair to their offspring. But 
it must be owned that there are exceptions. The 
White-banded Mocking-bird of Patagonia not only 
imitates every other bird, but has a glorious song of 
his own that surpasses all that he mimics. 
I have already mentioned the remarkable fact that 
some birds that have little or no song in the wild 
state have highly developed song-muscles which they 
can turn to account when subjected to instruction 
in captivity. The Bullfinch, is perhaps, the most 
remarkable example of this. His finely equipped 
organ of voice suggests that Bullfinches were once 
great songsters, but that they have lost the art of 
singing. If this is so, the theory that song is instinc- 
tive is not affected, since it is quite possible that in a 
musical species individuals might be born who had 
no impulse to sing; and if the species did not suffer 
through this, there is no reason why the song should 
not have become obsolete, while the organ of voice, 
being so small as to draw but slightly on the bird’s 
vital energy, might remain. 
The conclusions, then, that we come to are—(1) That 
song is instinctive. (2) That in many birds it requires 
to be awakened: they must hear their parents sing, 
but they pick up the song so quickly that to speak of 
their learning it by instruction is absurd. (3) That 
when a good singer learns another bird’s song his own is 
generally traceable still. The several songs of Daines 
Barrington’s Linnets may have been Linnets’ songs 
with variations. 
