Chap. XIII. 
VOCAL MUSIC. 
^6 
this subject.^^ Barrington, however, admits that supe- 
riority in song gives to birds an amazing ascendancy 
over others, as is well known to bird-catchers.” 
It is certain that there is an intense degree of rivalry 
-between the males in their singing. Bird-fanciers 
match their birds to see which will sing longest ; and 
I was told by Mr. Tarrell that a first-rate bird will 
sometimes sing till he drops down almost dead, or, 
according to Bechstein,^® quite dead from rupturing a 
vessel in the lungs. Whatever the cause may be, 
male birds, as I hear from Mr. Weir, often die sud- 
denly during the season of song. That the habit of 
singing is sometimes quite independent of love is clear, 
for a sterile hybrid canary-bird has been described 
as singing whilst viewing itself in a mirror, and then 
dashing at its own image; it likewise attacked with 
fury a female canary when put into the same cage. 
The jealousy excited by the act of singing is constantly 
.taken advantage of by bird-catchers ; a male, in good 
song, is hidden and protected, whilst a stuffed bird, sur- 
xounded by limed twigs, is exposed to view. In this 
manner a man, as Mr. Weir informs me, has caught, in 
the course of a single day, fifty, and in one instance 
seventy, male chaffinches. The power and inclination 
to sing differ so greatly with birds that although the 
price of an ordinary male chaffinch is only sixpence, 
Mr. Weir saw one bird for which the bird-catcher asked 
three pounds ; the test of a really good singer being 
that it will continue to sing whilst the cage is swung 
round the owner’s head. 
That birds should sing from emulation as well as for 
29 ‘ Philosophical Transactions/ 1773, p. 263. Wliite’s ‘ Natural His- 
tory of Selborne,’ vol. i. 1825, p. 246. 
30 ‘ Naturges. der Stubenvogel/ 1840, s. 252. 
31 Mr. Bold, ‘ Zoologist,’ 1843-44, p. 659. 
