INTRODUCTION, 
greatly enlarged vision he has epitomized the music of 
Nature as that must appeal to all of us else it cannot appeal 
at all. The mountain reveals the boundless horizon of a 
different world of which we have scarcely dreamed or 
thought, a world to which the little bird on viewless wing 
has ever sung, shall ever sing. His music is his language, 
for us it is interpretative of life’s experience; it is not a thing 
which we may cast aside as a child would discard his toy 
when it ceases to amuse. 
Hence, I believe the birds with their music are the revela- 
tion of a greater world, one with just such a boundless 
horizon as that which we view from the mountain’s summit 
marvelling that it is indeed the same narrow world we live 
in. 
It is not possible to listen to the melody of the Song Spar- 
row in early March without realizing for the time being that 
we are released from the cold clutch of winter and set 
down in the comfortable lap of spring. What matters it 
if the squalling interruptions of the Blue Jay disturb that 
delightful impression. A discordant note somewhere is a 
phase of life; not all the singers are divine, in fact, the world 
of music if it is true to life must record a due proportion of 
flippant jest, idle chatter, squawking disagreement, rag- 
time frivolity, mooning transcendentalism, and so on. A 
world of singing birds devoid of humor would be extremely 
dull; without something plainly, humanly nonsensical in it 
now and then it must be insufferably tedious. One would 
not dare to assume that naught of innocent jollity entered 
into the life of the bird. 
But of serene, exultant melody in the music of the birds 
there is plenty; the plainest evidence of it is in the songs of 
the Thrushes, and we have the convincing proof that their 
music is built upon definite, primitive scales—scales which 
the birds used zons of years before man did. This book is 
not the proper medium in which to set forth evolutionary 
theories of bird-song, but I must emphatically repeat that 
the bird sings first for love of music, and second for love of 
the lady. I am not alone in my theory of the inherent 
musical nature of song-birds, for Mr. Chauncey J. Hawkins 
writes in The Auk: ‘‘There must be something within the 
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