AVALON AND A BLACKBIRD 187 



weather returned. Tlic burden of his song was the fol- 

 lowing passage, vvliich was repeated so often that if one 

 could lire of natural nui.sic I should have been tired tlien: 



-^' m f 



=^ 



"All the other strains were unmetrical, and there 

 seemed to be in them no melodious arrangement of notes ; 

 so that the general effect was nearly what could be pro- 

 duced 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 cither the words or the melody of the re- 

 mainder." 



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 tlie British 

 songsters. Meanwhile we have the late C. A. Witchell's 

 Evolution of Bird-Song to go on with. He has recorded 

 in musical notations no fewer than seventy-six black- 

 bird strains in his book, and his views as to the origin 

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



