AVALON AND A BLACKBIRD 187 



song by which his memory was haunted, though he 

 was unable to recall either the words or the melody of 

 the remainder." 



This is interesting because it is so common — the 

 perfect musical phrase occurring in a song which is 

 for the rest of a quite different character. 



The question arises, are these phrases imitations or 

 natural to the bird ? Human music in bird-song is 

 a subject an American naturalist, Mr. Henry Oldys, 

 has made peculiarly his own, and he will be welcomed 

 by all lovers of bird music when he carries out his 

 intention of coming over to us to make a study of the 

 British songsters. Meanwhile we have the late C. A. 

 WitchelFs Evolution of Bird-Song to go on with. He 

 has recorded in musical notation no fewer than seventy- 

 six blackbird strains in his book, and his views as to the 

 origin of this kind of singing, in which the phrases 

 of the bird are identical with our musical intervals, 

 are of very great interest, as he is the only person in this 

 country who has made a special study of the subject. 

 There is, he writes, nothing surprising in these phrases 

 when we consider the imitative powers of the best 

 singers, and the frequency of human music in their 

 haunts. The field-labourer whistles ; from villages 

 issue louder, though not always sweeter, musical 

 sounds ; throughout the year music is heard in country 

 towns. It appears also that our musical scale is of 

 remote origin, and that for thousands of years the 

 intervals which we now employ have been wafted from 



