Songs Without Words 



ing, coaxing notes for the young, scoldings for the 

 cat, and so on through the gamut of his experiences. 

 There appears to be a different vocal expression 

 for each. And he has an old trick of humming 

 to himself with his mouth closed, as if practicing 

 for public recitals, — the most humorous perform- 

 ance of all, if you have the good fortune to sur- 

 prise him at it. 



WHY BIRDS SING 



A study of farmyard poultry reveals a surprising 

 number of call-notes in common use among chicks, 

 hens and roosters, not to mention the ejaculations 

 reserved for such unusual occurrences as the sud- 

 den swoop of a hawk or the headsman's axe. Forty 

 distinct utterances do not exhaust their vocabulary. 

 Here, better than elsewhere, we may observe the 

 necessity for every call-note and its fitness, and apply 

 some of our knowledge to the less accessible song- 

 birds. 



But a call is quite dififerent from a song, and 

 was doubtless evolved ages before it. One is a 

 first necessity, the other a highly desirable but sec- 

 ondary acquisition generally attained only by the 

 male. For the same reason that a rooster crows — 

 to challenge his rivals or to make a favorable im- 

 pression on the hens of his acquaintance — does a 

 bird sing, and the more refined and beautiful his 

 voice the higher does he rank in the books. Bird 

 music means vastly more than a crow, gobble, boom, 

 or drumming. It indicates the triumph of the 

 higher nature over the lower; it may become the 



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