THE SONGS OF BIRDS. 137 



" Whoever heard an owl sing ? " is asked in derision. 

 Well, my good friend, do you call the shrill, cacophonous 

 shouts of savages singing \ Yet we know that to these 

 same savage peoples their weird cries and monotonous 

 drumming are as melodious as the best efforts of a prima 

 donna are to us. While, as we understand melody, some 

 species of birds are endowed with marked musical abil- 

 ities and others are devoid of them, it does not follow 

 that the latter have not a series of notes or utterances 

 pleasurable to themselves and to their fellows. To deny 

 this is really to assert that some birds are gifted with 

 song for man's pleasure instead of for their own. This is 

 a common expression, I know, but it is utterly absurd. 

 Careful observation will enable any one to see clearly 

 that every bird has a considerable range of utterance, 

 which is divisible into cries or expressions of various 

 kinds, each, of course, having a different and uniform 

 meaning. Some of the low, monotonous notes of brood- 

 ing birds are evidently uttered for their soothing effect 

 upon themselves, their mates and young, and are only 

 heard during the nesting season. The truth is, a bird 

 can only be rightly understood by a bird, and a naturalist 

 must spend years in patient watching, often for days to- 

 gether, and must have made himself familiar to the birds, 

 before he can witness a tithe of the many acts which go 

 to prove that they approach nearer to reasoning beings 

 than is generally supposed. 



Space does not allow me to give all the details that I 

 have jotted down during my rambles about home, and I 

 must content myself with an occasional extract from my 

 note-book, in the effort to interpret briefly the songs of 

 many of our birds. 



Including some twenty species of warblers, more or 

 less regular in their yearly appearance, there are in Cen- 



