Evidently they had taken me for a corpse, but I think it was the liveliest one they ever saw.—J. Alden Loring, Owego, N. Y.
Songs of Birds
The songs of birds have attracted a good deal of attention in recent years, and observation seems to confirm the theory that each generation of birds learns the song characteristics of its species by association with its own kind.
This fact was brought quite clearly to my mind several years ago, when in a western town I was taken to a neighbor's to see his birds. Four cages swung in the shelter of a commodious porch. One contained a Red-winged Blackbird, that had been taken from its nest when very young, and brought up by hand. His associates were a Canary, a Blue Jay and an Oriole. The Canary had been purchased at a bird store, and had there learned its song. The Blue Jay and Oriole had been taken from neighboring nests, and had, no doubt, picked up the characteristic notes of their species from the many other members of their kind that inhabited the vicinity, but it was many miles to the nearest swamp or low land where one might find a Red-winged Blackbird. This Red-wing had learned perfectly the notes of his caged companions, and had picked up some notes of other birds in the neighborhood, but not one note of the Red-winged Blackbird did he know.—Frank E. Horack, Iowa City, Ia.
Birds. By A. H. Evans, M.A. The Cambridge Natural History, Vol. IX. London: Macmillan and Co., Limited. New York: The Macmillan Company. 1899. 8vo, pages xvi + 635. Numerous woodcuts in text. Price, $3.50.
The author of this compact volume has essayed what he himself recognizes as the "difficult and apparently unattempted task of including in some six hundred pages a short description of the majority of the forms in many of the families, and of the most typical or important of the innumerable species included in the large Passerine order."