90 THE STORY OF BIRD-LIFE. 



<ind the thrush occupy undoubtedly the foremost 

 place amongst our English songsters. But they 

 are by no means the ouly minstrels we possess. 

 Of songsters of Itsser mark we have a crowd. 

 By describing them as of lesser mark we do 

 not, however, wish to seem to despise them. 

 On the contrary, Ave prize them scarcely less 

 than their more gifted brethren. They are the 

 life and soul of some of the fairest spots of our 

 riversides and hedgerows. 



Our cousins beyond the seas are scarcely less 

 fortunate than ourselves. For our nightingale, 

 they have the mocking-bird, the cat-bird, and 

 many more. "How greatly, and how justly they 

 are esteemed, let tht-ir own poets — Walt Whit- 

 man, Burroughs, Emerson and Longfellow — 

 bear witness. 



I would here say a few words with regard to 

 the relation of the song of birds to our music, 

 which latter, as that great bird-lover, Mr Warde 

 Fowler, remarks, "is a highly-developed product 

 of science and art combined : that you cannot 

 write down on our musical scale without de- 

 priving them of all that freedom and wildness 

 in which their very life and beauty consist ; and 

 that they cannot be j^layed upon a highly artistic 

 instrument of man's making, though they can be 

 rudely imitated on a rude one. If they are to 

 be compared with anything human, it should 

 rather be with that rude music of jDrimitive man 

 out of which our own has gradually been evolved 

 — with cries of victory, the wailing of women, 

 the weird chant of the prophetess, or even the 

 ''hwyl" that may still occasionally be heard in 



