IN FIELD AND WOOD 



would keep up the outpouring of song continuously 

 for two or three months, throbbing and shaking 

 in ecstasy like a small dynamo, I was forcibly re- 

 minded of some of the less obvious but deep-seated 

 differences between ourselves and what we call the 

 lower animals, or of the action of instinct in the one 

 case, and the action of conscious intelligence in the 

 other. 



In this matter of song lies one of these differences. 

 The bird-song is much less a deliberate performance 

 than the human song, and is one of the secondary 

 sexual characteristics of birds. It is the badge of 

 the male alone, like the gay plumes, and is for the 

 most part confined to the breeding-season. 



To our ears it is expressive of joy, hilarity, ecstasy, 

 but it probably no more has its origin in those emo- 

 tions than the gay plumes do. Its origin is in the 

 male sexual principle; it is one of the surplusages of 

 nature. 



Fine gifts of song and brilliant plumage rarely go 

 together, as if both sprang from the same inward 

 necessity, and each precluded the other. Our gem- 

 like indigo-bird, for instance, is a faithful midsum- 

 mer songster, but in sweetness and tenderness how 

 far his strain falls short of that of the little brown 

 bush sparrow in the same field or bramble-patch ! 



But I was thinking more especially of the auto- 

 matic character of bird-songs. Their character in 

 this respect is so marked that they often remind me 

 257 



