BIRD MUSIC 145 



offensive flower-beds, the well-dressed invalids and 

 idlers, the artificiality of the scene, with big hotel 

 buildings for background, would be to me something 

 illusory a mental picture which I could dismiss from 

 my mind at any moment, or an appearance which 

 would vanish at a breath of wind or on the coming of 

 a cloud over the sun. The people sitting and moving 

 about me had no real existence ; I alone existed there, 

 with a willow wren for companion, and was sitting 

 not on an iron chair painted green but on the root of 

 an old oak or beech tree, or on a bed of pine needles, 

 with the smell of pine and bracken in my nostrils, 

 with only that wandering aerial tender voice, that 

 gossamer thread of sound, floating on the silence. 



This is doubtless an extreme example of the power 

 of expression, and could perhaps only be experienced 

 by one whose chief pleasure from childhood has been 

 in wild birds and who delights in bird voices above all 

 sounds. But expression is not everything : there is 

 a charm in some sounds so great that we love them from 

 the first time of hearing, when they are without associa- 

 tions with a happy past ; and in such cases we can sup- 

 pose that the emotional expression, if it exists at all, is 

 produced indirectly and forms but a slight element 

 in the aesthetic effect. 



There is, besides expression, another thing not 

 often taken into account which makes some bird 

 melodies impress us more than others the state of 

 mind, or mood, we are in and the conditions in which 

 it is heard. Yet it makes a world of difference even 

 10 



