THE MUSICAL SCALES OF THE THRUSHES. 
that the effect is one of a graceful, descending glissando, 
thus: 
No definite scale 
None of the 'Thrushes’ songs can be fully heard at a dis- 
tance greater than seventy feet or so from the singer. There 
are too many charming overtones and undertones which 
otherwise must be missed, and what is more to the point, 
the musical scale is not in evidence. The following record 
of a Hermit’s song is ample testimony to the fact: 
Incom "heard theme of Hermit Thrush 
he distance. 
This was taken from the highway in Campton, N. H., a 
- little less than a quarter of a mile from the point in the 
woods where the bird sang, July 1, 1918, and again a year 
later. A near record of the same bird’s song included four 
more notes, distinct, but softer in tone and more rapidly 
delivered. 
There can be no question whatever about the actuality 
of these scales upon which the music of the Thrushes and 
other advanced singing birds is based. I use the term 
music instead of song advisedly for the latter implies mel- 
ody, and it is an indisputable fact that most of the so- 
called songs of the feathered singers are not melodic but are 
of the nature of free fantasias more or less confined to a 
very limited form at best never extended beyond the 
pentatonic scale—a scale which is sufficient for the expres- 
sion of the most beautiful music the world has ever heard. 
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