INTRODUCTION. 
XXXIX 
after chickens ! ” To which Poll pertinently answered, “Yes, 
/, — and I know well enough how to do it;” clucking at the 
same instant in the manner of a calling brood-hen. 
The docility of birds in catching and expressing sounds 
depends, of course, upon the perfection of their voice and 
hearing, — assisted also by no inconsiderable power of memory. 
The imitative actions and passiveness of some small birds, such 
as Goldfinches, Linnets, and Canaries, are, however, quite as 
curious as their expression of sounds. A Sieur Roman exhib- 
ited in England some of these birds, one of which simulated 
death, and was held up by the tail or claw without showing any 
active signs of life. A second balanced itself on the head, 
with its claws in the air. A third imitated a milkmaid going to 
market, with pails on its shoulders. A fourth mimicked a 
Venetian girl looking out at a window. A fifth acted the 
soldier, and mounted guard as a sentinel. The sixth was a 
cannonier, with a cap on its head, a firelock on its shoulder, 
and with a match in its claw discharged a small cannon. The 
same bird also acted as if wounded, was wheeled in a little 
barrow, as it were to the hospital ; after which it flew away 
before the company. The seventh turned a kind of windmill ; 
and the last bird stood amidst a discharge of small fireworks, 
without showing any sign of fear. 
A similar exhibition, in which twenty-four Canary birds 
were the actors, was also shown in London in 1820, by a 
Frenchman named Dujon ; one of these suffered itself to be 
shot at, and falling down, as if dead, was put into a little 
wheelbarrow and conveyed away by one of its comrades. 
The docility of the Canary and Goldfinch is thus, by dint of 
severe education, put in fair competition with that of the dog ; 
and we cannot deny to the feathered creation a share of that 
kind of rational intelligence exhibited by some of our sagacious 
quadrupeds, — an incipient knowledge of cause and effect far 
removed from the unimprovable and unchangeable destinies of 
instinct. Nature probably delights less in producing such 
animated machines than we are apt to suppose ; and amidst 
the mutability of circumstances by which almost every animated 
