1889.] Development of Bird Language. 97 
not such a sound produced when rivers inundate marshes or 
marshes overflow their boundaries and are either roughly 
checked in their impetuous course by the sea and thence send 
forth a rushing sound ? Similar sounds are produced in cav- 
erns underground into which currents of water rush and dispel 
the air through small apertures."' According to both the 
Mosiac and Darwinian genesis we are to believe that this ele- 
mental turmoil and river rushing was a primal thing and pre- 
cedent of reptilian life just as reptilian life preceded avian life ; 
therefore the whole family " Bomugi " may have had their 
music second-hand, through batrachian ante-cessors, from wind 
and wave and chafed shore. If this be true of Bomugus, it is 
true of all, however shrouded now by the intricate processes of 
their evolution from such crude, unmusical beginnings to the 
higher minstrelsy of the present. 
At risk of the imputation of having a too fertile imagination, 
I will separate the second classof sound mimics into two divis- 
ions, — viz: I. Mimics of water sounds; 2. Mimics of wind 
sounds. The long and short-billed Marsh Wrens and the Win- 
ter Wren sing songs so in harmony with their aquatic surround- 
ings that you must be attentive to separate them from the 
rippling, bubbling sounds of moving water which they affect, 
the songs of the former being as characteristic of a marsh- 
receding tide as the other is in its unison with the prattle of 
woodland rivulets. The same may be observed of the Dipper, 
Kingfisher, Aquatic Thrush, Blue-yellow-back Warbler, Sea- 
side Finch, Swamp Sparrow and others of like predilections. 
Many years ago, when the subject began to claim my attention, I 
call to mind having nearly decided that the Swallows all sang 
improvisations of a single theme, the rapid clattering of their 
own mandibles. But on a later occasion, it having struck my 
fancy that I detected in the joyous little flight-song of a White- 
bellied Swallow coursing near by, a likeness to the dripping 
sound of water, I waited till its repetition and then asked my 
companion, a wide awake negro boy, if he heard "that 
bird "? " Why," said he, " was that a bird ? I thought it was 
