Song Birds and Water Fowl 
chanical means, it would at once sink to the 
level of offensive noise. Thunder’s power to 
stir the sentiment is chiefly through its asso- — 
ciation with lightning, elevation, cloud, and 
storm. With such association it is musical ; 
without it, it is not. The sentiment of sound is 
thus very often only an echo from accessories. 
The success of any of Nature’s sounds, like 
the success of a remark, lies in its appositeness. 
Science would extract no music from the buz— 
zing of a bumble-bee; but when, in the calm 
and brightness of a country day, a number of 
them are hovering about a fragrant syringa-bush, 
what, if not music, is that drowsy hum that is 
wafted through the air, without time or tune, 
uncadenced and unrhythmical? The tones of 
Nature take their color from surrounding ob- 
jects. In asense we may say that visible beauty 
thus becomes audibly transformed, and floats 
into the ear. The very merriment of wedding- 
bells is in the song of lark and oriole, in the joy- 
ous atmosphere of June; and all the melancholy 
of a funeral march is gathered into a single gust 
of a November sighing wind. Zemperament is 
the soul’s eagerness, and ¢az is the soul of song, 
be the quality of voice what it may. Through- 
out Nature’s gamut of sounds, there is none 
Ii2 
