1913 ' \ Oldy8, A Remarkable Hermit Thrush Song. 541 



evident, though variations were frequent. In every case the singer 

 seems to maintain the normal order more steadily after it has 

 gotten Into the swing of its singing, so to speak, and when it is not 

 disturbed in the slightest degre< — a very little disturbance, such 

 as the distant barking of a dog, is sufficient to disarrange the se- 

 quence. 



The remarkable character of the song of the Pompanoosuc Her- 

 mit Thrush is sufficiently evident to anyone who has any but the 

 dullest ear for music. But I wish to call special attention to the 

 additional proof it offers of the relationship between bird and 

 human music. The chance that the bird happened upon this 

 human progression of harmonies by coincidence is no less remote 

 than that a wild bird — say a Purple Grackle — should utter with 

 perfect pronunciation and inflection the words "My appetite is 

 excellent this morning" through an accidental grouping of articu- 

 late sounds. In the case of the grackle we should without hesita- 

 tion discard the theory of accidental coincidence and assert that 

 the bird expressed itself in human speech. So, too, in the case of 

 the Hermit Thrush must we discard the untenable theory of coinci- 

 dence and declare that the bird expresses itself in human music. 



The notes recorded were sung with great accuracy of intonation — 

 my ear is very keen to detect variations from the true pitch. They 

 were truer to the scale than those of nine human singers out of 

 every ten, and were recorded exactly as given. The song is doubt- 

 less exceptional — though I judge that fuller study of the singing 

 of Hermit Thrushes than it has yet received would disclose other 

 songs showing similar harmonic correspondence with our own musi- 

 cal requirements, — but any such resemblance to our musical forms 

 as it displays, though but a single instance, would serve to establish 

 relationship between bird and human music, while the large number 

 of recorded instances so far as other species are concerned, makes 

 the principle absolutely impregnable. A little thought will show 

 that coincidence is as much out of the question as in the case of 

 rlic hypothetical blackbird above mentioned, and that imitation, as 

 ;ni explanation, has as little standing. Astonishing and revolution- 

 ary as it may seem, there is no escape from the conclusion that the 

 evolution of bird music independently parallels the evolution of 

 human music and that, therefore, such evolution in each case is 

 not fortuitous, but tends inevitably toward a fixed ideal. 



