A MONTH’S MUSIC. 289 
inferior, disconnected, piecemeal sort? Within 
the next week. or two, however, the same game 
was played upon me several times, and in dif- 
ferent places. No doubt the trick is an old one, 
familiar to many observers, but to me it had all 
the charm of novelty. 
There are no birds so conservative but that 
they will now and then indulge in some unex- 
pected stroke of originality. Few are more art- 
less and regular in their musical efforts than 
the pine warblers ; yet I have seen one of these 
sitting at the tip of a tree, and repeating a trill 
which toward the close invariably declined by 
an interval of perhaps three tones. Even the 
chipping sparrow, whose lay is yet more mo- 
notonous and formal than the pine warbler’s, is 
not absolutely confined to his score. I once 
heard him when his trill was divided into two 
portions, the concluding half being much higher 
than the other — unless my ear was at fault, 
exactly an gctave higher. This singular refrain 
was given out six or eight times without the 
slightest alteration. Such freaks as these, how- 
ever, are different from the linnet’s Mary Ware, 
inasmuch as they are certainly the idiosyncra- 
sies of single birds, not a part of the artistic 
proficiency of the species as a whole. 
During this month I was lucky enough to 
close a little question which I had been hold- 
f 
C 19 
