IS WARBLKR ^^OXGS. * 



that will follow in good time. Equipped with the knowledge 

 of what bird music is, the student can go on to a study of the 

 characters common to the members of some group, this in turn 

 followed by study of the individual species. It is not at all 

 necessary to know the songs of many species of a group before 

 the group type is learned. The .songs of a half dozen or less 

 will be enough. 



To appreciate the realness of tlie.se difficulties one need 

 only scan the pages of a few books wherein bird songs are de- 

 scribed. Taking each description at its face value we should 

 be compelled to believe that there is no constancy to a song- 

 type within the species. But these diver.se descriptions are 

 often descriptions of the same individual bird, sometimes writ- 

 ten by different persons at the .same time standing .side by side. 

 It simply illustrates the first mentioned difficulty: that we see 

 things differently, hear sounds differently, call up the same 

 impression differently, are differently impre.s.sed by the same 

 thing ; and, of course, represent the .same thing differently. 



In view of this it would be time and effort wasted to at- 

 tempt a description of the melody in the .song of each species. 

 Rather let the effort go into a representation of the more 

 mechanical production of the song. The melody can be 

 hinted in word description, and more or less of it will appear 

 if the attempt be made to reproduce the .song from the descrip- 

 tion given. 



THE METHOD. 



There are objections to any system of representation, be- 

 cause each, and even all taken together, are wholly inadequate, 

 but some method must be employed. The system most widely 

 used is the system of .syllables. The birds do not speak syl- 

 lables, but our minds seem to need something of the sort to 

 fix upon as a suggestion of the sort of sound produced. We 

 seem to a.ssociate high pitched, shrill .sounds with the vowel e, 

 low whistling sounds with o, or a as in ah; terminal .sounds 

 not too high pitched become u. Short, high-pitched sounds are 

 like / in it. The chief objection to this system probably lies 

 in the great diversity of the vowel sounds, making uncertain 

 what sound is intended. This may be obviated in large meas- 

 ure by agreeing what sound each vowel shall always represent. 



