HERMIT THRUSRA. 
Aark from that moonlit cedar what a burstt 
What triumph! hark!—what pain! 
5 e e e e e ° t 
Listen, Eugenia— 
How thick the bursts come crowding through 
the leaves! 
Again—thou hearest!— 
Eternal passion! 
Eternal pain!” 
I wonder what he would have written in an ode to the 
American bird! certainly less about passion and pain, 
and more about musical bursts of triumph. As regards 
sentiment in a bird’s song, that, as I have already said, 
depends upon one’s state of mind; the passionate and 
plaintive notes of the Nightingale apparently have no 
place in the Hermit’s song; our gifted Thrush sings 
more of the glory of life and less of its tragedy, more of 
the joy of heaven and less of the passion of earth. That 
is a purely human point of view all the more significant 
because one bird sings to the European, and the other to 
the American ear! 
H. D. Minot, comparing English with American birds, 
writes, ‘‘ the Nightingale had a most wonderful com- 
pass, and was the greatest of all bird vocalists, but with 
a less individual and exquisite genius than our Wood 
Thrush.” In the vales of Tuscany, Italy, one of the best 
places in Europe to hear the Nightingale sing (possibly 
excepting the banks of the Volga, in Russia), there is 
amplo opportunity to listen to the exquisite trills, and 
solemn overtones of that famous bird, but an expe- 
rienced ear will not discover in the song anything like 
the melody of the Hermit Thrush. Musical notation is, 
of course, wholly inadequate to express the remarkable, 
appealing quality of the Nightingale’s voice, but the 
construction of the song is perfectly represented ; the 
following is a transcription taken from Lescuyer’s Lan- 
gage et Chant des Oiseaux : it shows how very simple the 
257 
