A NATURALIST IN BRAZIL 



with those of the northern world, and we shall not be mistaken if 

 we assume that they entered the country where the Isthmus of 

 Panama united North and South America. This immigration did 

 not take place so long ago that the song of the birds in question 

 has had time to transform itself into a completely tropical song. It 

 still sounds as it does in northern countries, but for this very reason 

 is all the more impressive, poignant and melancholy, just as in 

 music many effects are produced by flat discords. 



For this reason, in the Brazilian psychology, nostalgia, expressed 

 in Portuguese by the beautiful word saudade, is evoked above all 

 by the song of the South American thrush, the Sabia. It was in 

 enforced exile that Gon9alves Diaz wrote his song of longing : 



Our homeland has its palms, 

 There sings the Sabia , . . 



whose ever-recurring refrain is : 



Where sings the Sabia. 



And no Brazilian poet who interprets the moods of Brazil will 

 ignore this bird. I can well believe that a Brazilian in Europe is 

 reminded, by the notes of our thrush, of the song of the Sabia, and 

 longs for the home which arises before him as he listens to its strains. 

 I myself have experienced the converse. When in March I sat in 

 the monastery garden in Pernambuco, and the song of the Sabia 

 rang from the forest, which was lit by the setting sun, the air was 

 of almost unearthly limpidity, and the landscape was pregnant 

 with a sweet melancholy. And then I thought of my home in a 

 similar mood. 



The Sabia sings not only in the evening twilight, but also in the 

 rain, sharing this peculiarity with our thrush and blackbird. In 

 Pernambuco I heard principally two motives : tiiu, tiiu, hiiiiit, hiiiiity 

 quite like the motives of our song-thrush, but there were also warblers, 

 which, like the blackbird, fluted more consecutively and had rolhng 

 notes. In the botanical gardens of Rio, which are swarming with 

 Redbreast Sabias, that go hopping all over the lawns, and sound 

 a warning note like that of our blackbirds, and make the same din 

 on retir* qg to their quarters for the night, I noted the strophe: 



^ 



It 



with a "dying fall" on the third and fifth notes. On the peak of 

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