854 The American Naturalist. [October, 
thus given, only a few minutes were needed to get the analytical one.” 
(Sub-Conscious Reasoning, Proc. S. P. R. pp. 11-13).—A. B. 
“The Mimetic Origin and Development of Bird-langu- 
age,” and ‘‘ The Evolution of Bird-song.’’—When one considers 
how many people are thinking at the same time, it does notseem strange 
that two persons, though widely separated and totally unknown to each 
other, should sometimes think not only of the same subjects but also fol- 
low in the same direction and practically at the same time, the same 
lines of original thought and investigation. Some of these duplicated 
ideas are of value in commerce ; others are mere metaphysical specula- 
tions, possibly suggested by the same incidents; but at this late stage 
in the knowledge of natural history it does appear unusual that two 
people in different hemispheres and observing totally different species 
of animals saould have simultaneously pursued independently the same 
far-reaching but novel line of speculative thought. 
A few days ago, Mr. J. E. Harting called my attention to an article 
in THE AMExIcAN NATURALIST, entitled “The Mimetic Origin and 
Development of Bird-language,” which appeared in that journal for 
March, 1889. He did so because I had lately written a book on the 
subject, The Evolution of Bird-song (London, A. & C. Black, May, 
1896), and because the article in question discussed some of my themes. 
I have just finished a perusal of the article, which was indeed rather 
exciting, since in nearly every paragraph I found an anticipation of 
some theory or observation of my own, which I had theretofore believed 
to be original. In fact, any one reading the article and afterwards 
reading The Evolution of Bird-song, would think that I had borrowed 
without acknowledgment a good many ideas thrown out by Mr. Samuel 
N. Rhoads, the writer of the essay in question. However, I am able 
to prove that in 1888 I had already made investigations on exactly the 
same lines as Mr. Rhoads, and had recorded the results of them in writ- 
ing. Inthe summer of 1887 I began to make systematic records of 
the imitations I heard from imitative wild British birds, and in the 
course of this study various themes were attacked, such as “ the influ- 
ence of combat,” “ the influence of the love-call,” ‘ family-voices,” and 
“the influence of imitation,” etc. I wrote essays on these themes and 
sent them to the late Professor Harker, F. L. S. and some of them to 
Mr. S. S. Buckman (now an eminent geologist), with whom I had many 
conversations on the subjects in question. In 1890 these observations 
appeared, in a highly condensed form, in The Zoologist, in two papers 
entitled “ The evolution of bird-song,” and published respectively in 
