Ixxxiv 
INTRODUCTION'. 
We have already made some remarks on the migraJon of jirds, a 
propensity so active in most of the feathered race; but it is not less 
remarkable that birds, in general, which migrate, also congregate some in 
that if any of them continue their song in the cold season of winter, when they no longer feel 
the influence of desire, that love is not the sole cause of their song. Many birds, in the dead of 
winter, when the days of love and incubation have long expired, even in a wild state, gratify us 
with their melodies; while the vegetable world lies benumbed around them, while the hot impulse 
of desire is chilled and frozen, they make the woods echo responsively to their warblings, or 
imitate, in hurried notes? the babblings of the stream. I have, again and again, heard the Water- 
ouzel sing in the months of November, December, January, and February; and the Goldfinch, 
the Linnet, the Thrush, the Woodlark, the Skylark, the Wren, and the Robin, in October and 
November: and throughout the mild winter of 1806, the Thrush continued in full song. The 
‘k\\ior heard several of this species in the month of November, and one on the third of December, 
1808 . If we say with the one party, that love is not the sole cause of song, and with the other, 
that it is only one of the causes, that its sensations give a rapturous elevation which birds do not 
at other times attain, we should, perhaps, be more correct. The disputants have not ended here ; 
the song of birds seems fruitful in contentious themes ; some of the advocates of the first opinion 
have been the supporters of innate song ; but the Honourable D. Barrington asserts, that the 
young Sparrow, educated by the Goldfinch, never uses the broken interrupted chirp of its 
fellows, but the song of its tutor ; and the Cuckoo, uniformly before it acquires its slow-told 
notes, chirps like its foster parents. I have found this so generally the case, that I have scarcely 
ever erred in pronouncing the species which had reared the numbers of young Cuckoos which I 
have had in my possession. The regular song of birds is as evidently artificial as the language 
of man. Nature endued both with the power of utterance, but taught neither what to utter ; a 
bird, that had never heard one of its kind, would no more sing like the rest of its species, than a 
savage, who had been reared alone in the forest, would speak like the people from whom he 
sprung ; he would utter the harsh, jarring, discordant sounds of nature, but no regular language ; 
it would express its passions in crude chirpings, but not in the modulated mode of its congeners. 
Buffon, the most eloquent, the prince of natural historians, sagaciously remarks, that sweetness of 
voice and melody are qualities in birds, which are partly natural and partly acquired ; that in all 
populous and civilized countries most of the birds chaunt delightful airs, but that in the extensive 
deserts of Africa and America, with few exceptions, the winged tribes utter only harsh and 
discordant cries. 
I had often heard and read, that bird-catchers preferred birds taken in one county to those of 
thie same species caught in another. For a long period I had no opportunity of ascertaining the 
