Even among the lower orders of creation, a law of transmission obtains.
A writer in an Australian quarterly for April, 1906, tells of a
magpie near Melbourne, which while a captive had been taught to
whistle “Merrily danced the Quaker’s wife, merrily danced the
Quaker,” and passed the song on to its young, through whom, in a
more or less fragmentary way, it was transmitted to subsequent
generations, so that there are “many now in the forest who
still conclude their beautiful wild notes with the ascending
notes which terminate the old air.” (Text.)
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