^"ivS™] x "'' '""' A '" 473 



"Mu ical notation mighl m well be Greek o fai a il give an adequate 

 idea of song to an} other than th< tran criber," and anol her while admitting 

 the difference in tone quality between note sung hy a bird and notes 

 p] iyed >»ii a piano, fail to realize the mechanical nature of the piano cal< 

 and cites hi inability to recognize ong played on the piano from record 

 made in musical notation l<y one of the leading students of bird ong, as 

 Indicating the failure oi bhi method. Of forty-one ong played by the 

 piani I "thirty-three conveyed absolutely no impression, we could nol 

 even guess at their identity." 



I h( re are of com e two objects in view in recording l>inl song, (1 1 to 



provide a descripl ion of the song thai will enable someone el e to reproduce 



or recognize it, (2) to make an accurate record of the song which may be 



compared with other records made by the same or other individuals, the 



eri< forming the ba i foi a scientific study of the subject. 



The fin I i the phase of the ubjeel that has received mosl attention. 

 No matter whal method of notation or description ma] b< u ed il is ex- 

 tremely doubtful whether any bird song can be so recorded thai one who 

 ii i never heard it can reproduce it with any degree of accuracy from the 

 printed record. Even such an easily imitated '••■ill as thai of the Whip- 

 poor-will has to I"- heard before il can be reproduced with proper accent, 

 ipeed, and quality. 



When ii comes to recording a song so thai one will I"- able to recognize 

 in i he descripl ion a song I hat he ha 3 actually heard, i he case i- very different 

 and i he calls and songs of many pecie ma \ be o recorded. The mel hod 

 of notation may vary, il may be yllabic or it, may be mu ical but neither 

 will give any idea of quality which can only be supplied, and incompletely 

 at that, by some descriptive clauses. To the musician however the musical 

 notation is by no meant "Greek," and with some description of quality 

 he gets a far better idea of a song accurately represented on a musical staff 

 than the non-musician is able to obtain from a syllabic representation. 



Some syllabic representations recall the note very accurately as 'Whip- 

 poor-will,' 'Pee-wee,' 'Bob-white'; the 'Pea-body, pea-body, pea-body' 

 of the White-throated Sparrow etc. etc. Others arele i happy, while a 

 majority of efforts, where the song is less striking, are almost ridiculous. 

 One ha bul to compare the efforts of various writers to see how widely 

 their ideas of proper syllabic representation of song differ Winn attempt 

 is made to illu trate individual variations of the song of any pecies by 

 i in method one usually loses entirely the points of re emblance between 

 the variations which are so well .shown by the musical notation. 



'I he nunc important phas< of the study of bird song is the formation of 

 a erie of records as a basis for scientific comparisons and deduction , such 

 record constituting the 'specimens' for this line of investigation. In 

 tin work the use of mu ical notation i absolutely) ential, just as mathe- 

 matii i ■ ential in computing averages and percentages of error, in bird 

 migration, or chemical notation in recording the composition of pigments 

 or other products of the bird's structure. These are all unintelligible to 



