Proceedings. 79 
APPENDIX. 
Sones or Brrps. 
Paper by Mr. J. B. Crosriexp read on the Excursion 
to Dry Hill, 7th May, 1898. 
As the conductor is expected to provide a short paper or 
address intended in some measure to illustrate some of the 
objects of investigation of the excursion, I have thought that a 
few remarks on the songs of the birds likely to be heard in the 
course of our walk may have some interest, and so far as I am 
aware it is a subject that has not been touched upon on any 
previous occasion. I select it because the month of May is the 
one in which the variety and volume of song to be heard reach 
their maximum ; the migrants have now practically all arrived, 
and except the Missel Thrush no species has as yet diminished 
the flow of song. I am afraid, however, that we are already 
too late for this one species. I have often heard people express 
a wish that they knew what the different birds are that they 
hear singing, and a regret at being unable to distinguish them. 
To learn this is, I imagine, mainly a question of a little patient 
and close observation. Although the songs of some few 
species resemble one another somewhat, yet it will be found 
that each has its own characteristics, and a song, when once 
identified and known, will not readily be forgotten. The differ- 
ences are rather such as exist between different musical instru- 
ments than between different tunes. I will give first a list of 
the birds whose songs we may expect to hear in the course of 
our walk, arranged roughly in their order of merit as songsters ; 
though of course this is a point on which there is room for 
difference of opinion. I divide them into three classes, the 
third class including those birds whose song consists merely of 
the same series of notes again and again repeated, almost or 
quite without variation. Such a song seems of a lower type 
of development than those in the other two classes, which have 
attained to a greater or less degree of variety in the arrange- 
ment of their notes or pbrases. 
