184 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS 



be in them no melodious arrangement of notes; so that the 

 general effect was nearly what could be produced by a person 

 talking in his natural tone of voice, and repeatedly introducing 

 a snatch of an old song by which his memory was haunted, 

 though he was unable to recall either the words or the melody 

 of the remainder. 



This is interesting because it is so common — the 

 perfect musical phrase occurring in a song which is 

 for the rest of a quite different character. 



The question arises, Are these phrases imitations 

 or natural to the bird ? Human music in bird-song is 

 a subject an American naturalist, Mr. Henry Oldys, 

 has made peculiarly his own, and he will be welcomed 

 by all lovers of bird music when he carries out his 

 intention of coming over to us to make a study of the 

 British songsters. Meanwhile we have the late C. A. 

 Witchell's Evolution of Bird-Song to go on with. He 

 has recorded in musical notation no fewer than seventy- 

 six blackbird strains in his book, and his views as to 

 the origin of this kind of singing, in which the phrases 

 of the bird are identical with our musical intervals, 

 are of very great interest, as he is the only person 

 in this country who has made a special study of the 

 subject. There is, he writes, nothing surprising in 

 these phrases when we consider the imitative powers 

 of the best singers, and the frequency of human music 

 in their haunts. The field-labourer whistles; from 

 villages issue louder, though not always sweeter, 

 musical sounds; throughout the year music is heard 

 in country towns. It appears also that our musical 

 scale is of remote origin, and that for thousands of 

 years the intervals which we now employ have been 



