Mar., 1921 THE BIOGRAPHY OF NIP AND TUCK 43 
the nurse becomes the first tongue of the child. Is it so with birds? Do the 
little ones learn by their mother’s twitterings? 
The early speech of Nip and Tuck was a matter of great concern, there 
fore, to their foster parent. At the time of their adoption into human society 
their vocal expression was limited to a subdued squeak inaudible at a distance 
greater than a yard. What possibilities were there for training such voices 
and fashioning them to an ideal set by the teacher? Educators are wont to 
stick their fingers into the plastic clay of childhood merely to see how per- 
fectly their thumb prints may be impressed. Why not try out a theory on the 
twins? Do the offspring acquire a vocabulary by imitation or do they inherit 
it through the generations? Parent linnets, during visits to the nestling young, 
utter a very definite note of constant character. If another note were subst!- 
tuted and were sufficiently frequent in its repetition, would that sound be ac- 
quired by the young? Since the twins were obliged to accompany their new 
parent to and fro on a ten mile trip daily, there was every reason to believe that 
the dominant musical influence of their impressionable period would be the 
song of a Ford engine. However, with the commendable optimism of the edu- 
cator who believes that a small leaven of uplift will raise the sodden mass of 
erosser influence, the foster parent set to work to administer that uplift. 
The linnet’s feeding note was carefully avoided and, in its place there 
was given the sharp, ringing note of the Canyon Wren, and on this auditory 
diet the little birds’ receptive centers were fed during the period of infancy. 
Would they first lisp in the language of linnet or that of the Canyon Wren? 
Would the chromosome of inheritance yield to the stimulus of environment? 
Not so, as we shall see. With the growing strength of the young birds, the 
squeak increased in volume up to a limited maximum. Then on a certain 
morning Nip awoke from his after-breakfast nap and burst forth with an en- 
tirely new note, not a mere squeak, but a truly vocal sound, the perfect call of 
the young linnet. Despite his artificial upbringing, Nip had discovered himself 
a true linnet and spake in the tongue of his ancestors. Tuck soon followed in 
the way of the more progressive Nip and the infantile squeak was no more 
heard. Nip and Tuck had refused ‘‘baby talk’’. Again the cheerful educator 
pocketed his failure and consoled himself that he had gained by his loss— 
through his failure had a new truth been established. 
Perhaps such a result should have been expected from an attempt to mod- 
ify those more fundamental notes we might designate the call notes, but what 
of the more superficial, the more complex and variable character, song? Voice 
quality in birds is largely, it would seem, a matter of structure of the voeal 
chords and hence is conveyed by the bearers of heredity as definitely as are the 
characters of beak or claw. Song, however, may be modified as to its se- 
quence of notes, and some highly imitative birds of varied vecal power have 
been taught a variety of performances. 
Not discouraged by the seeming failure of the first attempt at uplift, the 
uplifter therefore continued his effort at vocal education throughout the 
growth period of his charges, in the hope of influencing the song of the male. 
Was it disappointment or was it secret satisfaction over a substantiated theory 
that held first place in the biologist’s mind when, six weeks later, just before 
the necessary interruption of the intimate association of pupil and teacher, 
Nip burst into his first song? It was a song he had never heard before and 
had never rehearsed, the tribal song of his fathers. 
