THE EVOLUTION OF BIRD-SONG. 165 



that specimen excited his intense displeasure. It is not a matter 

 of indifference to Ornithology to state these personal facts, for 

 his collecting-book and specimens illustrate the avifauna of the 

 South-east of Ireland, affected as it is by the Pembroke and 

 Wexford migration route, and the leading estuaries of Waterford 

 Harbour and Tramore Bay. For instances of Owls accompanying 

 a vessel for four hundred miles and alighting on the rigging, see 

 Thompson, * Birds of Ireland,' vol. i. p. 104. 



THE EVOLUTION OF BIRD-SONG. 

 By W. Warde Fowler, M.A. 



In the last number of 'The Zoologist' Mr. Witchell com- 

 plains that I misrepresented him in my ' Summer Studies of 

 Birds and Books,' published last year, while he was absent from 

 England. I have now re-perused his original paper very care- 

 fully, and also the Supplement to it, of which he has been good 

 enough to send me a separate copy, and I am glad to take this 

 opportunity of freely acknowledging that he has good grounds 

 for complaint in at least two particulars. 



(1). I find that, as Mr. Witchell states, the Thrush is not 

 one of those birds whose song is attributed by him to a humble 

 origin, e.g. (as I stated his view), the cracking of a snail-shell. 

 He does not seem to explain the song of the bird otherwise than 

 as a series of imitations of other birds : it is only the " occasional 

 clicking sound " which he compares to the breaking of the shell, 

 and he does not in this instance deduce the song from a habit of 

 repetition of sounds of this kind, as he does in some other cases. 

 I much regret this misapprehension, and will see that it is cor- 

 rected in any future edition of my book. It arose, I imagine, 

 from the general tendency of Mr. Witchell's argument, which is 

 stated by him as applicable to song in general, without mention 

 of exceptions, in his concluding paragraph (Zool, 1890, p. 246). 



(2). When I suggested that it would be interesting to study 

 the songs of some group of birds, with a view to the discovery 

 of an archetypal character common to all its members, I was not 

 aware that Mr. Witchell had added a short supplement to his 

 paper, in which he had written that " the similar cries of certain 

 nearly-allied species seem generic," &c, and had illustrated this 



