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 octave 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- 



19 



