f26 HISTORY OF MEXICO. 



year, and has a more varied fong. Thefe arc three 

 confiderable advantages which it poffeffes over the Euro- 

 pean bird. But although there were not in America 

 either nightingales, calandras, or any one of thofe birds 

 which are efleemed in Europe for their fong, the cent- 

 zontli or polyglot alone would be fufficient to excite the 

 envy of any country in the world. We are free to de- 

 clare to our Anti-american philofophers, that what Her- 

 nandez fays of the excellence of the polyglot over the 

 nightingale is extremely true, and agreeable to the opi- 

 nion of many Europeans who have been in Mexico, and 

 alfo of many Mexicans who have been in Europe. Be- 

 fides the fmgular fweetnefs of its fong, the prodigious 

 variety of its notes, and its agreeable talent in counter- 

 feiting the different tones of the birds and quadrupeds 

 which it hears (ji) ; it is lefs fliy than the nightingale, 

 and more common, as its fpecies is one of the moft nu- 

 merous. If we were difpofed to reafon in the manner 

 of Mr. de Paw, we could, in order to demondrate the 

 benignity of the American clime, add, that fome birds 

 which are not valued in Europe for their finging, Ung 

 much better in America. The fparrows, fays Valdece- 

 bro, an European author, which do not ling in Spain, 

 are in New Spain better than calderines 



What we obferve of finging birds may be applied 

 alfo to thofe which imitate the human voice ; for in 

 Afia and Africa the fpecies of parrots are neither fo 

 many nor fo numerous as they are in America. 



But 



(ju) Mr. Barrington, vice-prefident of the Royal Society of London, fays, 

 in a curious work he has written on the finging- of birds, and prefeuted to 

 that learned academy, that he heard a polyglot which counterfeited in the 

 fpace of one fingle minute, the finging of the lark, the chaffinch, the black- 

 bird, the fparrow, and the thrufh. 



(*) In a work entitled Gobierno de las Aves, lib. v. cap. 29. Eut we have 

 already obferved, that the ?vlexican fparrow, though refembling, is different 

 from, the true fparrow. 



