AVALON AND A BLACKBIRD 189 



and distant temperate regions of the home liird, and in 

 some instances it is said to sing l)etter tlian our bird. I 

 tliink that if these travellers had been specially interested 

 in this subject and had listened attentively to the exotic 

 species, they would have found that these too have 

 phrases that sound like fragments and snatches of human 

 melodies. 



The blackbird often reminds me of the common 

 Patagoni:m mocking-bird, Minius patachonicus, not in 

 the quality of the sounds emitted, nor in the shape of 

 the song, nor in any resemblance to human melody, but 

 in the way the bird throws out his notes anyhow, until 

 in this haphazard way he hits on a sequence of notes, 

 or phrase, that pleases him, and practises it with varia- 

 tions. Finally, he may get fond of it and go on re- 

 peating it for days or weeks. Every individual singer 

 is, so to speak, his own composer. 



In listening to a blackbird, even where there is no 

 resemblance to a man-made melody, it always appears 

 to me to come nearer to human music than any other 

 bird songs; that the bird is practising, or composing, and 

 by-and-by will rise to a melody in which the musical 

 intervals will be identical with those of our scale. I 

 recall the case of a blackbird of genius I once heard 

 near Fawley in the New Forest. This bird did not 

 repeat a strain with some slight variation as is usually 

 the case, but sang differently each time, or varied the 

 strain so greatly as to make it appear like a new melody 

 on each repetition, yet every one of its strains could 

 have been set down in musical notation. A musical 



