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194 THE CONDOR Vol. XXIV 
new notes at the end of the common song; and these brand new notes were un- 
mistakably imitated from other species. 
I heard the first of these two abnormal songs near Chalk Peak, in the Santa 
Lucia Mountains, Monterey County, California, June 22, 1919. Over and over 
again the bird sang the typical ‘‘bouncing’’ song of the species, plus a low 
bubbling warble of four syllables. The warble was so nearly identical with part 
of the song of the Western House Wren (T'roglodytes acdon parkmant) as to be, 
in itself, mistakable for it. The song ran: tip tip lip—ip-prrrrr, 
chreh-chreh-chreh-chreh. This song struck me at the time as a ‘‘freak’’, but I 
made a careful record of it, nevertheless, and on my return home filed the record 
away. 
This ‘‘freak’’ song was given new meaning when, three years later, namely, 
on May 2, 1922, I heard, in the Botanical Gardens of the University of California, 
the following: tip —tip——tip—ip-prrrrr, chrip-chrip. The added feature 
this time was a perfectly good chirp of the Linnet (Carpodacus mexicanus fron- 
talis). The towhee sang this song repeatedly with no deviation except that 
occasionally it used a single instead of a double chirp. 
The thing that seems to me significant about this business is that these two 
‘‘off’’ songs, coming by chance to my attention, and occurring quite indepen- 
dently of each other in point of space and time, should be so remarkably alike 
in their ‘‘offness’’. I can hardly escape the belief that the observed facts indi- 
eate a racial, rather than an individual tendeney at work. Chauncey J. Hawkins, 
discussing the evolution of bird song (1922, p. 53) asserts that ‘‘when we turn 
from the study of individuals to the group of individuals which has assumed 
the rank of subspecies then divergences are perpetuated.’’ He mentions some 
typical evolved differences of utterance between subspecies. The theory is that 
they exist as fixed differences now, because the original tendency to departure 
from the type was uniformly expressed by the individuals of a group. The 
freak or exceptional songs ‘‘are not perpetuated in the life of the species nor in 
subspecies. They are lost with the individuals.’’ JI am proceeding on the not 
too unreasonable assumption that my two aberrant Brown Towhees represent a 
‘“group.’’ It seems not improbable that. since two individuals with similarly 
divergent songs have come to my personal attention, there must be others which 
have not. I base my assumption on the fact that the two songs are alike, not in 
one respect (which might be accidental) but in several respects, which I shall 
mention presently. This points to something deeper and more lasting than 
individual eccentricity. 
We know that a Brown Towhee hatched say in Humboldt County behaves, 
looks. and is ‘‘like’’ another Brown Towhee hatched in Monterey County. It is 
three hundred miles from Cuddeback to Jolon, but the Brown Towhees of each 
locality are more nearly alike than any two randomly chosen humans of the 
same race. Why? Because both individuals—though they, nor their parents, 
never have come in contact—partake of the specific essence of Pipilo crissalis 
crissalis. Nothing has gone from one to the other, or even from any ancestral Pip- 
alo to them. Yet they are what the ancestral Pipilo is, in size, shape, color, man- 
nerisms, voice. And, since they are alike in these essentials why should they dif- 
fer in the essential of song-improvement? ‘‘Germ-cells’’, says Charles Otis Whit- 
man (1919, p. 179), ‘‘behave alike in development, not because anything is — 
transmitted to them, but because they represent identical material and constitu- 
