equally useless appeals.

These finch contests were suggested after the meaning of the song of
the birds was learned. But when these birds, which are more usually
isolated--whence they have been named _Fringilla coelebs_, or
celibates--hop around our houses and also utter their amorous trills
at another than the mating season, they are evidently not calling the
female. Should we not then seek to determine by the tone whether their
call, which is always the same, is amorous or not?

In countries where flocks of turkeys are raised one can learn very
quickly from their gobblings when they have captured a hare. If they
meet him standing still or lying down, they form in a circle around
him, and, putting their heads down, repeat continually their peculiar
cries. The hare remains quiet, and it is sometimes possible to take
him up, terrorized as he is in the midst of the black circle of
gobbling beaks and heads. The language of the turkeys is at that time
incontestably significant. It is warlike, and similar to that of the
males when they are fighting. In the present instance they have joined
for war, and they make it on the frightened hare.

My Jaco, like all parrots, which are excellent imitators, pronounces a
few words and repeats them over and over again. Such birds amuse us
because the words they know sometimes happen to be ludicrously
fitting. A bird of this kind had been struck by the note sounded by
the wind blowing into a room through a crack in the glass work
whenever a certain door was opened; and he had become so perfect in
his imitation that they sometimes, on hearing the noise, went to shut
the door when it was not open.