1889.] Development of Bird Language. 99 
The same previously noted of Doves, may apply to the 
" pevvee " of the Flycatcher, the "yank yank" of Nuthatches, 
the scolding of our Vireos, parts of the song of many higher 
oscines, (Turdidas and Icteridae), and all songs of the more 
essentially whistling birds, or at least, such part of it as they 
have not acquired from the whistling Batrachia. Whistling, 
and its fife-like modulations was likely among the smaller 
thick-billed families, to be the natural outcome of the imitative 
faculty, limited in quality and variety by the peculiar struc- 
ture of their mandibles, but the appearance of tenuiostral 
forms enabled the more specialized vocalists to produce those 
more flexible, flute-like songs, which characterize them. 
The third class division of mimics will include birds unmis- 
takably imitators of their contemporaries in song, — mockers in 
the strict sense, and indebted to furred and feathered originals 
for the greater part. All in this class have a score of their 
own, a thread of original prose melody, lavishly embellished 
by poetic quotations from their favorite authors. By way of 
distinguishing these from the rest let us compare the Mocking- 
bird and Song-Sparrow. Each are songsters par excellence in 
their separate classes; each boast of a varied repertory, yet in 
the last, these variations are merely varietal combinations of 
the"sui, sibi, se or sese " solus of ancestral Melospiza, and 
{inter se) difier only by numerical sequence of the syllables in a 
"four foot iambic," or by a change of accent or the addition of 
a final syllable, convert iambus to trochee and wind up with 
anapest flourish ; whereas Mimus, multiplying his own wild 
originality by a hundred borrowed roots endlessly declines and 
conjugates, or with Pentecostal inspiration speaks all languages 
in one. From " yon trim Shakspeare on the tree," we pass 
again by exquisite minor gradations of the feathered genius, 
to sweet sparrow-rhymes and rhymesters many. Past Brown 
Thrush, Cat-Bird and White-eyed Vireo, by whom a sort of five 
mmute rule has been set up in which each borrowed phrase is 
given impartial hearing, according to calendar, as if it were ; 
—so on, by way of the Baltimore Oriole, Carolina Wren and 
others, which are not chronically mockers, but hold that talent 
