122 WOOD NOTES WILD. 



Newness of the Field. — Contin. 



" Barrington defines a bird's song to be a succession of three 

 or more different notes, which are continued without interrup- 

 tion during the same interval with a musical bar of four crotch- 

 ets in an adagio movement, or whilst a pendulum swings four 

 seconds. Now let us see what notes have been detected in the 

 soug. Observers have marked F natural in woodlarks ; A in 

 thrushes ; C falling to A commonly in the cuckoo ; A natural 

 in common cocks ; B flat in a very large cock ; D in some 

 owls ; B flat in others. Thus we have A, B flat, C, D, and F, 

 to which Barrington adds G, from his own observations on a 

 nightingale which lived three years in a cage ; and he confirms 

 the remarks of the observer who furnished him with the list, 

 and says he has frequently heard from the same bird C and F. 

 To prove the precision of the pitch of these notes, the B flat of 

 the spinuet by which he tried them was perfectly in tune with 

 the great bell of St. Paul's. E, then, is the only note wanting 

 to complete the scale ; but, as he says, the six other notes afford 

 sufficient data for making some conjectures with regard to the 

 key in which birds may be supposed to sing, as these intervals 

 can only be found in the key of F with a sharp third, or that 

 of G with a flat third ; and he supposed it to be the plaintive 

 flat third, that affecting tone which, in the simple ballad, or 

 'wild and sad' chorus, so comes home to our bosoms. . . . 

 Barrington pronounces in favor of the flat third because he 

 agrees with Lucretius that man first learned musical notes 

 from birds, and because the cuckoo, whose 'plain song' has 

 been most attended to, performs it in a flat third." 



This brings us down to 1857 in England, — indeed, we 

 may say on the European continent, — and if we are to 

 trust a philosopher thoroughly versed in the structure 

 of music, no advance was made, to say the least, in the 

 next thirty years. "No one who has taken the very 



