VENTRILOQUIAL AND IMITATIVE POWER OF BIRDS. 71 
only acquire certain notes or bars, which they sometimes 
incorporate in their own songs, thus making quaint and 
curious medleys of doubtful quality. Canaries long 
living in company where they continually hear one 
another’s notes will finally sing very nearly alike, though 
at first the general characteristics of their songs may 
have been quite different. 
The mocking-birds excepted, perhaps the song spar- 
row, oftener than others, mix with their strains notes 
not belonging to their own songs. I have heard them 
throw in those of the chewink, both at the middle and 
ending of their songs; also that of the robin, blue bird, 
phebe bird, and purple finch. 
Near a creek which is much frequented by water 
birds, I have heard during the past three summers a 
Sparrow interject in his otherwise fine song the high, 
sharp notes of the peetweet. Dr. Placzek, in the Pop- 
ular Science Monthly, speaks of a yellow thrush taken 
from the nest and domesticated, which, of its own 
accord, commenced crowing like a cock. “I sometimes 
heard, early in the morning, a clear, melodious cock 
crowing’ that seemed to come from a distant barn-yard. 
Going into the library one morning, where the bird was, 
I sat still in a further corner of the room till things 
began to get lively in the cage. I could see him with 
out being seen. Soon he found his voice, and sounded 
the cock crow which I had so often heard before with- 
out suspecting its real origin. Had I not seen the 
bird’s mouth open and his throat vibrating, I should 
still have thought the sound came from a distance. 
