PERSONALITY IN BIRDS 223 



reverse. For, judged upon the evidence of their 

 songs alone, the Chiffchaff, Willow-wren, and Wood- 

 wren birds intimately related in other respects- 

 would suffer immediate divorce. 



Not so the Blackcap and Garden-warbler, whose 

 songs resemble one another more nearly than those 

 of any other two British birds. And yet, strangely 

 enough, in all that goes to make up personality 

 in birds, these two are so alike that their chief 

 distinction lies in these very similar songs. The 

 Blackcap combines with the purity of tone of the 

 Willow-wren, the freedom, rounded finish, and some 

 of the fulness of the song of the Chaffinch. Indeed, 

 upon hearing the song of the Blackcap, that of the 

 Chaffinch springs at once into the hearer's mind; 

 but he recognises that the former is, as it were, the 

 inner, finer core of the latter, divested of the coarser 

 dash and self-assertion of the finch. For the 

 Blackcap is a Warbler of the Warblers, and for 

 what reason it would be a long tale to tell has with 

 a few other important members of his class set the 

 canon by which man judges what is best in the 

 songs of birds. The Garden-warbler suffers by too 

 great proximity, and the minute-long rambling of 

 its song enfeebles it as compared with the concen- 

 trated brilliancy of the shorter song of the Blackcap. 



As a third group we may set down the Nightingale, 

 the Robin, the Redstart, and the Hedge-sparrow, 



As a bird for the most part of the woodland, by 

 the general scheme of its colouring brown above 

 and white below by the fundamental character of 

 its song, and by its low girding note of remonstrance, 

 the Nightingale recalls some of the Warblers of our 



