DIFFICULTIES, AND METHOD OF 

 PRESENTATION. 



^ I ^HE difficulties which one who attempts a description of 

 -^ the songs of the Warblers meets at the outset seem al- 

 most uusurmountable. First of all is the ' personal equation ' 

 of the describer as well as the ' personal ecpiation ' of the one 

 for whom the description is attempted. This may be min- 

 imized by combining notes from many describers, thus securing 

 a sort of Volapuk description, which will really be a general- 

 ized song possibly suggestive to most persons already familiar 

 with the song, but practically useless to the novice. The 

 writer's practice, where there is considerable difference in the 

 descriptions, is to combine those that are alike into a type, 

 and then illustrate each type. Where this is not df)ne practi- 

 cal agreement may be assumed. 



Another difficulty lies in the variability of individual birds 

 composing the species. Without such variabilit}' there would 

 be no progress of the species toward a more perfectly devel- 

 oped song. But the variation here is less of a hindrance to 

 the intelligent understanding of a description than the diffi- 

 culty stated above. Indeed, I am not sure but this difficulty 

 is a blessing in disguise, for some one of the variations may 

 fit the description for the learner, where an unvariable one 

 would utterly fail. 



The one great difficulty lies in the almost entire lack, among 

 human signs and symbols, of anything to even approximately 

 represent birds' voices. We can only suggest with the means 

 at hand. Our sy.stems of musical notation are wholly artificial 

 and mechanical, theirs wholly natural and unhampered. Our 

 ears have become so accustomed to certain fixed intervals in the 

 chromatic .scale that we are prone to regard them as ab.solute ne- 

 cessities to any sort of melody. But if that be not true, there 

 yet remains the entire lack of characters with which to repre- 

 ,sent the avian music in terms of human music. The learner's 

 first need, then, is to become accustomed to bird music experi- 

 mentalh". It is not necessary- to know what species is .singing; 



