Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 30.djvu/416

400 accurately the cackling of hens, the barking of clogs, the quacking of ducks, and the bleating of sheep. Birds as well as mankind are apt to be vain of their voices and seek to excel one another. Especially is this the case with nightingales. In a hedge inhabited by them one may often observe that their voices increase two, ay, threefold in strength, and sometimes some of these birds are found with their throats torn—they have simply sung themselves to death! But not only in music have birds been the model followed by man, but also that peculiar and entertaining art, ventriloquism, has been copied from them. Just as many of them sing out boldly and fill the air with their melodies, others form their sounds without opening their bills. The pigeon is a well-known instance of this; its cooing can be distinctly heard, although it does not open its bill; the call is formed internally in the throat and chest, and is only rendered audible by resonance. Similar ways may be observed in many birds and other animals. The clear, loud call of the cuckoo is, according to Nicolardot, only the resonance of a note formed in the bird. The whirring of the snipe, which betrays the approach of the bird to the hunter, is an act of ventriloquism. The frog also is said not to open his mouth in croaking, but to create his far-reaching sounds by the rolling of air in his intestines. Even the nightingale has certain notes which are produced internally, and which are audible while the bill is closed. So even the art of ventriloquism (if we may call it an art), which is nowadays but little practiced, but which in former times was highly esteemed, has been taught to man by the animals.

Human society seems attractive to birds, as Nicolardot proves by numerous instances; especially have song-birds a great fondness for human dwellings, and rarely do they go far away from them. It almost seems as if they were vain of the admiration bestowed on their song. They lay and hatch better in parks than in woods. Nicolardot says that the cuckoo, the crow, the quail, and the lark, never live in districts entirely untenanted by man. There are quite a number of city and village birds which always settle in the immediate neighborhood of human dwellings. Among these are the starling, the nightingale, the finch, and the sparrow, but above all the stork. All of these birds are said to imitate, by their calls or their song, the human voice, or else noises which are to be heard about dwellings. For instance, it is said that the stork in Africa—though this we would not like to vouch for—is dumb, and that his clappering here is but an imitation of the sharpening of scythes. This sound is supposed to be specially pleasing to the stork, because on freshly cut meadows he always finds food in plenty, and therefore it is presumed that he imitates this noise as suggestive of a rich dinner. All of these birds show great fondness for, and are said to be capable of imitating, the human voice, if one were only to take sufficient pains in training them. And, more than this, they can repeat entire words like the parrot. That starlings and