APPENDIX. 121 



Newness of the Field. — Contin. 



" I have seen no bird music that is not strained and un- 

 natural ; but I must say nothing ' out loud.' I am familiar 

 with the songs of these birds, and find nothing here that 

 I have heard. Now then, tell me who the author is and 



when he wrote." — Letter from S. P. C. in response to an article 

 extracted from an American Magazine of 1858, and sent him by the 

 editor of the present volume. Date, November, 1889. 



Our author, unfamiliar as he was with the literature 

 of bird music, regarded himself as standing pretty much 

 alone ; the field was to him decidedly new. Would he 

 have felt differently had he made an extended survey 

 of it ? W. J. Broderip published the third edition of 

 his "Zoological Kecreations" in 1857, giving in one of 

 the earlier chapters the pith of the famous paper by 

 Daines Barrington, published in the Philosophical Trans- 

 actions of 1773. He says : — 



" The Hon. Daines Barrington, who paid much attention to 

 this subject, remarks that some passages of the song in a few 

 kinds of birds correspond with the intervals of our musical 

 scale ; but that much the greater part of such a song is not 

 capable of musical notation. He attributes this to the follow- 

 ing causes : first, because the rapidity is often so great, and it 

 is also so uncertain where they may stop, that it is impossible 

 to reduce the passages to form a musical bar in any time what- 

 soever ; secondly, on account of the pitch of most birds being 

 considerably higher than the most shrill notes of instruments 

 of the greatest compass ; and lastly, because the intervals used 

 by birds are commonly so minute that we cannot judge at all 

 of them from the more gross intervals into which our musical 

 octave is divided. 



