CHAP, vi On the Songs of Birds 125 



shows that he, like all true poets ancient and modern, 

 thought of them as music and song in something 

 more than metaphor. But as one whose enjoyment 

 and knowledge of music is much older even than his 

 study of ornithology, I will venture to raise a question 

 about their musical quality which I have never seen 

 quite adequately discussed. In what sense can we 

 truly call them music? What is their relation to 

 our modern musical art ? 



Without doubt the best of them consist chiefly of 

 musical sounds, and are not merely noises, for they 

 are produced by an instrument the same in kind, 

 though not the same in the detail of its mechanism, 

 as the human voice and some of our musical instru- 

 ments. I say the lest of them; for we must not forget 

 that the birds which have learnt to play upon their 

 instrument with a really pleasing result are very few 

 indeed, and that some have that instrument incom- 

 plete, while a few do not possess it at all. But where 

 it is perfect the singing apparatus of a bird is a 

 legitimate musical instrument, consisting of a long 

 tube and a tiny membrane which vibrates under the 

 transmission of air from the lungs, and it is played 

 upon, or modulated, by muscles which tighten and 

 relax like the lips of a performer on a reed instru- 

 ment. The method of producing the sound is in fact 

 very much the same in the bird and in a reed instru- 

 ment ; and this may account for what I may call the 



