BIRDS' NESrS AND SONGS. 
187 
and it had there caught the exact notes of the wren, and had 
entirely lost even the very call of the goldfinch. And a common 
house-sparrow, whose own note is, as we know well, but a 
common chirp, when brought early up near a goldfinch, had 
entirely learnt the "note of this bird. Even the nightingale is 
apt, in confinement, to learn the notes of other birds in place of 
its own beautiful song. A redstart has been known to imitate 
the song of a caged chaffinch ; and the bullfinch, whose natural 
notes are weak, harsh, and insignificant, has a wonderful musical 
faculty, and can, as we well know, be taught to whistle many 
complete tunes. Such facts as these, which may be multiplied 
indefinitely, lead us to suppose that birds learn their songs much 
as we learn languages, our own or foreign ones. Some birds 
learn more readily than others, just as human beings do ; and 
some have far better organs of song than others ; for the faculty 
of acquiring notes there seems no valid reason for assigning to 
birds any other faculties than those that we ourselves possess. 
It is much the same with regard to the formation of nests. 
Experiments, such as those with the chaffinches in New Zealand, 
seem to show that nest-building and house-building run on 
pretty much alike. Birds learn to build just as we do. Some 
are better builders than others, they are neater in their habits, or 
they have stronger legs, claws, and beak, or a more compact 
body ; thus the nests vary in structure much as houses do. 
A careful consideration of the whole subject may thus, 
perhaps, lead us to accord to the beautiful creatures from whom 
we derive so much pleasure faculties which, though in some 
respects inferior to ours, are yet not wholly different from our 
own. Reason, Intelligence, Instinct have been largely and 
learnedly discussed, and much variation has arisen in regard to 
what or whom these several faculties should be accorded to. 
And the more of these faculties that we grant to birds, the better 
would be presumably the treatment they would receive at our 
hands. From beings gifted with intelligence we should hardly 
dare to pluck plumes to adorn ourselves with ; and the more 
that we accord to birds of the faculties on Avhich we pride our- 
selves, the more should we assuredly refrain from all cruelty 
towards them, and the more should we be ready to extend to 
them the claims that they so amply deserve. 
In an article on “ Feminine Cruelty ” in a recent medical 
journal, it is said that “ it is a piece of almost proverbial wisdom 
that women are more cruel than men, and certainly the callous 
barbarism displayed by ladies of fashion and their imitators 
during the present season will go far to confirm the belief. Last 
year it was said that they had bought their hats before they 
knew that the feathers in them involved the destruction — some- 
times under circumstances of great cruelty — of beautiful races of 
birds. But birds’ feathers have reappeared this year, and the 
excuse now given is that the feathers are ‘ not real.’ ” After 
citing a letter of Sir W. H. Flower’s in which this “absurd 
