Music and Dancing in Nature. 275 



effect on the ear similar to that which rain does on 

 the sight, when the sun shines on and lightens up the 

 myriads of falling drops all falling one way. In this 

 manner the birds sing for hours, without intermission, 

 every day. Then the passion of love infects them ; 

 the pleasant choir breaks up, and its ten thousand 

 members scatter wide over the surrounding fields 

 and pasture lands. During courtship the male has 

 a feeble, sketchy music, but his singing is then ac- 

 companied with very charming love antics. His 

 circlings about the hen-bird; his numberless ad- 

 vances and retreats, and little soarings above her 

 when his voice swells with importunate passion ; his 

 fluttering lapses back to earth, where he lies prone 

 with outspread, tremulous wings, a suppliant at her 

 feet, his languishing voice meanwhile dying down to 

 lispings all these apt and graceful motions seem to 

 express the very sickness of the heart. But the 

 melody daring this emotional period is nothing. 

 After the business of pairing and nest-building is 

 over, his musical displays take a new and finer form. 

 He sits perched on a stalk above the grass, and at 

 intervals soars up forty or fifty yards high ; rising, 

 he utters a series of long melodious notes ; then he 

 descends in a graceful spiral, the set of the motion- 

 less wings giving him the appearance of a slowly- 

 falling parachute ; the voice then also falls, the notes 

 coming lower, sweeter, and more expressive until 

 he reaches the surface. After alighting the song 

 continues, the strains becoming longer, thinner, and 

 clearer, until they dwindle to the finest threads of 

 sound and faintest tinklings, as from a cithern 

 touched by fairy fingers. The great charm of the 

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