nd
such notes. You may have been his friend for years, but the next time
you go into the woods he will likely enough put you to shame by singing
something not so much as hinted at in your description. I thought I knew
the song of the yellow-rumped warbler, having listened to it many
times,--a slight and rather characterless thing, nowise remarkable. But
coming down Mount Willard one day in June, I heard a warbler's song
which brought me to a sudden halt. It was new and beautiful,--more
beautiful, it seemed at the moment, than any warbler's song I had ever
heard. What could it be? A little patient waiting (while the black-flies
and mosquitoes "came upon me to eat up my flesh"), and the wonderful
stranger appeared in full view,--my old acquaintance, the yellow-rumped
warbler.

With all this strong tendency on the part of birds to vary their music,
how is it that there is still such a degree of uniformity, so that, as
we have said, every species may be recognized by its notes? Why does
every red-eyed vireo sing in one way, and every white-eyed vireo in
another? Who teaches the young chipper to trill, and the young linnet to
warble? In short, how do birds come by their music? Is it all a matter
of instinct, inherited habit, or do they learn it? The answer appears to
be that birds sing as children talk, by simple imitation. Nobody
imagines that the infant is born with a language printed upon his brain.
The father and mother may never have known a word of any tongue except
the English, but if the child is brought up to hear only Chinese, he
will infallibly speak that, and nothing else. And careful experiments
have shown the same to be true of birds.[6] Taken from the nest just
after they leave the shell, they invariably sing, not their own
so-called natural song, but the song of their foster-parents; provided,
of course, that this is not anything beyond their physical capacity. The
notorious house sparrow (our "English" sparrow), in his wild or
semi-domesticated state, never makes a musical sound; but if he is taken
in hand early enough, he may be taught to sing, so it is said, nearly as
well as the canary. Bechstein relates that a Paris clergyman had two of
these sparrows whom he had trained to speak, and, among other things, to
recite several of the shorter commandments; and the narrative goes on to
say that it was sometimes very comical, when the pair were disputing
over their food, to hear one gravely admonish the other,