How The Bullfinch Is Taught To Sing

Boys and girls are not the only little folks who attend singing classes, as you shall know when you hear about the piping bullfinch. In shape and size this bullfinch is somewhat like the sparrows in our city parks, but he has a very different head. The sparrow, you know, has a trim, quick little pate of his own. Not so the bullfinch. Mis is a clumsy afBair - in fact, he has a sort of " buil " head and neck ; so, you see, he is well named. Besides, his body is nearly as black as a coal, and his throat is as red as if the coal were on fire. He is not naturally a singer, nor is he half so clever as our American mocking-bird. In fact, he seenis rather stupid, but he is willing to learn ; and so it happens that if you perseveie long enough you can teach him to sing a tune. The country people of Germany haTe found this out. There the peasants take great delight in training bullfinches. Their pupils, not being very bright, as I said bet'ore, are etupidly hopping about their cages, when suddenly they hear a tune played upon a violiu. They prick up their ears, - or would do so if they could, and begin to listen, quite unconscious that the very same violin has been playing that very same tune for about a week, without their noticing it. But it is something to catch their attention. Day after day, for months, the patiënt teacher goes over and over the same tune to the listening birds until human Ii8teners begin to wonder which will get crazy first, the bullfinch or the player. But by and by the bird begins to piek up the air, piping the simple parts at first, and taking up note after note until, at last, they know the wholö thing by heart. Sometíales a rustic father spends half his time all winter teaching one little patiënt biid, and the children look on with the greatest interest. Or a boy will undertake the task, and when he at last succeeds, his sisters look upon him as the most wonderful fellow in the world ; and they cry in real earnest when the wonderful boy carries his pupil to town to be sold ; for sold these bullfiuches are sure to be as soon as they are taught, or else exhibited by their owners as street singers. Sometime8 bird-teachers are known far and wide for their skill and success ; and at Freiburg, in Baden, and small villages on the outskirts of the Black Forest, bullfinch-training is practiced as a regular business. In such cases a small hurdygurdy, or " bird organ " is used, as being less diffioult and tiresome than the viohn ; and instead of training one bird, they teach the same tune to a class of ten or a dozen. Generally, the birds are sent to London or Paris, where, if they have learned their lessons thoroughly, they are bought by rich folks, put into beautiful cages and treated as pets, whilst other bullfinches, having trifled away their schooldays and only half learned their tune, live a vagrant life around the markets, belonging to uobody, and picking up