192 STUDIES IN LIFE AND SENSE. 



a curious fact that the bird-songsters are all of the smallest size. 

 Rarely, if ever, do we hear a melodious voice in a large bird ; the 

 Australian Menuras^ or lyre-birds so named from the shape of the 

 tail-feathers birds which may attain the size of a small turkey 

 being the most notable exception to the general rule above-mentioned. 

 Then, too, we shall find that the songs of birds may and do improve 

 by culture. Sparrows will learn in time to sing most melodiously ; 

 and of course there is no end to the list of tunes or sounds a mock- 

 ing-bird may acquire. In addition to true song, some birds may, as 

 Darwin has it, practise " instrumental music." The turkeys " make 

 a joyful noise " in their own fashion by scraping their wings on the 

 ground, and the snipes, and grouse, " drum " with their wings, as also 

 do the male goatsuckers or " nightjars." 



Our study draws to a close. I promised at the outset that it 

 could be nothing better than sketchy in its nature, and it has been 

 an easy matter to fulfil a promise of the kind in question. But out- 

 lines are preliminaries to complete pictures ; and if I have neither 

 the courage nor the temerity to fill in the sketch, I am well content 

 to have perchance paved the way for a fuller consideration of the 

 questions regarding the origin of songs with words and songs without 

 words which contribute so much to our rational and natural enjoy- 

 ment, and I will add instruction in the ways of living things likewise. 



The evening begins to draw nigh ; and already the singers of the 

 day are leaving their leafy orchestra, and flitting homewards to rest. 

 That weird mammal the bat vestige, as it seems to me, of the 

 great flying Pterodactyls of the middle ages (of geology) is abroad, 

 looking after his interests in the way of gnats, moths, beetles, and 

 such belated flies as may have innately determined that they " won't 

 go home till morning," like certain rustic friends in the neighbour- 

 hood, who thus declare on leaving " The Swan with Two Necks " in 

 the village but of whom a chief peculiarity is that once home they 

 won't leave home for work when the morning comes, a fact explicable 

 possibly on grounds connected with obscurity of the cerebral circula- 

 tion. The bat sweeps round and round, but is no singer of mine, 

 although it squeaks when caught. Possibly under training the bat, 

 like the mouse, might "sing" and I heard a mouse sing sweetly 

 behind a wainscot once upon a time. 



I hear a faint stirrage amongst the crows in the nests overhead ; 

 Mr. Crow possibly absorbing too much house-room, and Mother 

 Crow expostulating on behalf of herself and progeny. The beetles 

 are out for the evening, and now and then a late dragon-fly wheels 

 and sweeps along, regardless of certain active birds with wide gapes 

 that hover near like aerial spectres. I hear a frog croak now and 

 then by way of assurance, I presume, that the Clammyskin family 

 "never nods," but is invariably active and alive to the exigencies 



