THE TRANSCRIPTION OF BIRD SONGS. 205 



bird songs and to write poetry about them and to tell the 

 world how they make you feel. It is quite another matter 

 to transcribe them, to represent them in an intelligible no- 

 tation. M}^ experience has been something like this. I 

 had always been dissatisfied with both the descriptions 

 and transcriptions of bird songs as they appeared from 

 time to time in bird books and in periodicals, and I saw no 

 reason at first why I might not improve upon them. So I 

 plunged boldly in. At first I endeavored merely to recol- 

 lect the song and make my notes after returning from the 

 field. I soon found this method would not work, for rec- 

 ollection proved to be exceed ingl)^ difficult. The reason 

 for this I did not at the time apprehend. Next I made it 

 a practice to take down each phrase on the spot and at the 

 moment. This promised better results, and, in fact, jdeld- 

 ed better results in that I could begin to see some relation 

 between my notes as written and the song as delivered. 

 Gradually it dawned upon me what was the chief cause of 

 the difficulty. It was simply this — the songs of birds very 

 rarely, except b}^ accident, fit our musical notation. Our 

 scales, especiallj- the major scale, are very artificial and 

 very incomplete. In our notation the tone space between 

 any given tone and its octave is arbitrarily divided into 

 twelve equal or nearly equal parts. In the major scale 

 one set of seven tones, and in the minor scale another set, 

 are selected as scale or diatonic notes. The minor scale 

 is, I think, a better medium for the expression of the mu- 

 sic of nature than the major scale, the latter having been 

 smoothed down and tempered to meet the demands of civ- 

 ilization. It is certain that the minor scale is the strong- 

 er. Now this difference in the two scales is manifested 

 also in the harmonies associated with and produced by 

 them. Each tone of the major and of the minor scales is 

 the foundation of a chord made up of a succession of ma- 

 jor and minor thirds, and each of these chords has a char- 



