The question has been often mooted, as to whether song-birds acquire their respective warble or song by the ear alone, that is, by listening and imitating, as a child would do, or whether it is intuitive; the answer is not very easy. There is an impulse in song-birds to express their feelings of pleasure or enjoyment, by giving utterance to modulated sounds, so pleasing to the human ear, that their song leads too frequently to their friendly imprisonment. Young birds, brought up by their parents, and with a vocal pipe best fitted for the enunciation of the strain of their parents, (or rather male parent,) rapidly acquire that strain, and soon begin to record, or try it over in an under tone, and bearing it in memory, break out into full song when leafy spring returns. Nevertheless, birds, taken early from the nest, and put under the tuition of other birds, acquire to a certain extent the song of the latter, often, indeed, apparently perfect; yet, perhaps, could our ears catch it, we should find that the bird had much of the parent accent in its acquired language. Though birds receive ideas of a simple character, and express simple feelings, understood by each other, through the medium of various sounds, yet nothing from age to age is thereby added to their knowledge; they remain what they have been from the commencement of their creation. Their ears are far less the inlets to knowledge than their eyes, and this observation applies generally to the lower animals. Now let us turn to man. Setting aside meaningless sounds and noises, (some of which, however, through the association of ideas, are very grateful, as those of the multifarious denizens of a farm-yard,) man derives both pleasure and knowledge from a definite succession of sounds, which appeal to his mind, as sound cannot appeal to the mind of the lower orders. How laughable is the fabled contest of the lutist and the nightingale, and of the death of the latter disappointed of the victory--the lutist might have enjoyed the warbling of the bird, but the bird could not have entered as a rival into the strains of the lutist. Nevertheless, from personal observation, and from the most credible authorities, we fearlessly assert, that many animals are allured by sweet sounds; we have seen rats peeping out of their holes, listening to airs played on a flute; and sir Walter Scott says, "Rude Heiskar's seals through surges dark, Will long pursue the minstrel's bark."