A MUSICAL KEY. 
EXTREMELY IMPORTANT TO THOSE WHO DO NOT READ 
MUSIC. 
Success in identifying a bird’s song depends more upon 
the ability of the ear to discriminate differences of 
rhythm than differences of tone; for, every species fol- 
lows its own unalterable law in rhythmic time, no matter 
how different are the songs of birds of the same species. 
This is an apparently irrefragable principle which is the 
key to an immediate recognition of the singer. 
But there are those who entertain a contrary opinion. 
Mr. Maurice Thompson, in Sylvan Secrets, writes: ‘‘There 
is no such element as the rhythmic beat in any bird-song 
that Ihave heard. Modulation and fine shades of ‘ color’ 
as the musical critic has it, together with melodious 
phrasing take the place of rhythm. . . . The absence of 
true rhythm probably is significant of a want of power to 
appreciate genuine music, the bird’s comprehension com- 
passing no more than the value of sweet sounds merely 
as such.” Now if the writer means what he says about 
the ‘‘rhythmic beat ” he is certainly all astray, but if he 
is confusing mechanical time with the rhythm or ‘‘ metre” 
of poetry he is not only wrong but misleading in his use 
of terms, for no English word expresses rhythmus vetter 
than the word ‘‘ time,” and I shall presently demonstrate 
the fact that birds know how to keep time perfectly. 
But metre is a different thing, it implies proportion, and 
of that the wild bird naturally knows but little. 
The most obvious explanation of a ‘‘ rhythmic beat” 
is the drum beat. Here it is: 
Each line represents a half second, therefore d =120 toa minute, 
| 
tat itatet ital ftt 
Any child would know what you were representing if 
you tapped that way on the table. Now the question at 
once arises, is thexm any bird that sings in accordance 
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