IN FIELD AND WOOD 



had been doing it many hours a day since early May. 

 On the same day I heard the indigo-bird repeating its 

 song eight times a minute, many times during the 

 day. 



If music with the birds was an art that they learned 

 as we do, and consciously practiced for their own 

 and others' enjoyment, we should most assuredly 

 have far less of it than we do. Reason tires and gives 

 up much sooner than instinct. 



Then, the musical talent is a fortuitous and un- 

 certain thing with Homo sapiens, but it is constant 

 and universal with the thrushes and sparrows and 

 vireos. Every male bird of these species sings, and, 

 except in rare instances, sings as well as its fellow. 



Another fact that shows the automatic character 

 of bird-songs is this : A bird with a defective voice, 

 as occasionally happens, will sing as persistently 

 and joyously in its period of song as its fellow with 

 the perfect voice. I have heard a bobolink with a 

 broken, wheezy, half-inarticulate voice hover and 

 sing above the daisies and the clover as gleefully as 

 the bird with a perfect instrument. It sang, not for 

 its own edification or the edification of others, but 

 because it had to. It was wound up to sing, and 

 sing it must, be the result never so defective. 



Music in the insect world is of a like automatic 

 character. Their fiddles and harps and drums and 

 cymbals and castanets are all set going by the sea- 

 son's warmth, and fail as the warmth fails, as surely 

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