ON THE NOTES OF BIRDS. 31 
the observer under the painful necessity of destroying 
life—a recommendation which will be duly appreciated 
by every person possessed of a humane disposition and 
a reflecting mind. 
Having endeavoured in these few preliminary ob- 
servations to point out the great importance of attend- 
ing to the notes of birds, I shall now proceed to an 
inquiry into their origim—an inquiry well calculated 
to exercise the skill of the experimentalist and the 
ingenuity of the speculative philosopher, though. to 
the generality of mankind it may seem trivial and of 
little moment. 
The only author that I am acquainted with who 
has treated this curious’ subject at any length is the 
Honourable Daines Barrington, in an essay entitled 
“Experiments and Observations on the Singing of 
Birds,” published in the second part of the sixty-third 
volume of the ‘ Transactions of the Royal Society ;’ 
and as the experiments there detailed appear to be 
imperfect and unsatisfactory, and the conclusions 
drawn from them hasty, unwarranted, and contrary 
to common experience, and more especially as this 
author is generally referred to by our cyclopzdists*, 
and as his opinions seem to be finding their way into 
modern works of respectability, where they are quoted 
as established facts which do not admit of a doubt ft, 
* See the ‘Encyclopedia Britannica,’ art. “Singing,” and 
Rees’s ‘ Cyclopedia,’ art. “Song.” 
+ See Bingley’s ‘ Animal Biography,’ vol. ii. pp. 166, 167. 
