140 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS 



on account of their small volume, how could the very 

 best of the natural music of birds delight us — the 

 small exquisite strains emitted by the wagtails and 

 pipits, the wheatear and whinchat, the willow-wren 

 and wood-wren, the linnet and reed-warbler ? The 

 very most that can be said of such minute melodies 

 is that, like the little gurgling and lisping sounds of 

 a pebbly streamlet and of wind in leaves and the 

 patter of rain, it is soothing. 



Another cause of indifference is that for some 

 persons the sounds are without expression. 



We know that when the occasions of past happi- 

 ness, and the fact of the happiness itself, have been 

 forgotten, something yet remains to us — a vague, 

 pleasurable emotion which may be evoked by any 

 scene, or object, or melody, or phrase, or any sight 

 or sound in nature once associated with such happi- 

 ness. It is this halo, this borrowed colour of a thing, 

 which gives the expression. Those who say that they 

 find an indefinable charm or beauty in any sight or 

 sound do not as a rule know that it is not a quality 

 of the thing itself which moves them, that their 

 pleasure is almost wholly due to association, and that 

 in this case they "receive but what they give." 



An instance of this charm which any natural object 

 or sound may have for us is given by Gilbert White in 

 his description of an insect. "The shrilling of the 

 field cricket," he says, "though sharp and stridulous, 

 yet marvellously delights some hearers, filling their 

 minds with a train of summer ideas of everything 

 that is rural, verdurous, and joyous." There can 



