MOTIF OF BIED SONG. 77 



of certainty, how clear or how dim may bo 

 the bird's conception of melody or of beauty ; 

 but we can know that its enjoyment of color 

 and sweet sounds is most intense. The wood- 

 pecker, beating his unique call on a bit of 

 hard, elastic wood, is making an effort, blind 

 and crude enough, but still an effort, to ex- 

 press a musical mood vaguely floating in his 

 nature. We may not laugh at him, so long 

 as from the interior of Africa explorers bring 

 forth the hideous caricatures of musical in- 

 struments that some tribes of our own genus 

 delight themselves withal. Among the South- 

 ern negroes it was once common to see a 

 dancer going through an intricate terpsicho- 

 rean score to the music of a "pat," which 

 was a rhythmical hand-clapping performed 

 by a companion. I mention this in connection 

 with the suggestion that the chief difference 

 between the highest order of bird-music and 

 the lowest order of man-music is expressed 

 by the word rhythm. There is no such an el- 

 ement as the rhythmic beat in any bird-song 

 that I have heard. Modulation and fine 

 shades of "color, "as the musical critic has 

 it, together with melodious phrasing, take the 

 place of rhythm. The meadow-lark, in its 

 mellow fluting, comes very near to a measure 

 of two rhythmic beats, and the mourning 

 dove puts a throbbing cadence into its plaint ; 

 but the accent which the human ear demands 

 is wholly wanting in each case. On the other 

 hand, the mocking-bird, the cat-bird, and the 

 brown thrush accentuate their songs, but not 

 rhythmically; indeed, the cat-bird's utter- 

 ance is an impetuous stream of glittering ac- 

 cents, as it were irregular, tricksy, flippant, 

 and yet as symmetrical, in a certain sense, as 

 the bird itself and the mocking-bird's song 



