An artificial song is one borrowed from a bird that the young ones have heard singing in the room, a person's whistling, a flageolet, or a bird-organ. Nearly all birds, when young, will learn some strains of airs whistled or played to them regularly every day; but it is only those whose memory is capable of retaining these that will abandon their natural song, and adopt fluently, and repeat without hesitation, the air that has been taught them. Thus, a young goldfinch learns, it is true, some part of the melody played to a bullfinch, but it will never be able to render it as perfectly as this bird; a difference not caused by the greater or less suppleness of the organ, but rather by the superiority of memory in the one species over that of the other. We distinguish in birds a chirping and warbling, or song, properly so called; besides this, several species, with a large, fleshy, undivided tongue, are able to repeat articulate sounds, and they are then said to _talk_, such as parrots and jays. It is remarkable, that birds which do not sing all the year, such as the red-breast, siskin, and goldfinch, seem obliged, after moulting, to learn to warble, as though they had forgotten; but I have seen enough to convince me that these attempts are merely to render the larynx pliant, and are a kind of chirping, the notes of which have but little relation to the proper song; for a slight attention will discover that the larynx becomes gradually capable of giving the common warble. This method of recovering the song does not then show deficiency of memory, but rigidity occasioned by the disuse of the larynx. The chaffinch will exercise itself in this way some weeks before it attains its former proficiency, and the nightingale practises as long the strains of his beautiful song, before he gives it full, clear, and in all its extent[2]. The strength and compass of a bird's voice depend on the size and proportionate force of the larynx. In the female it is weak and small, and this accounts for her want of song. None of our woodland songsters produces more striking, vigorous, and prolonged sounds than the nightingale; and none is known with so ample and strong a larynx: but as we are able to improve the organisation of the body by exercise and habit, so may we strengthen and extend the larynx of several birds of the same species, so as to amplify the song in consequence, by more nutritive food, proper care, sounds that excite emulation, and the like; chaffinches, bullfinches, canaries, and other birds reared in the house, furnish daily examples of this.