ENGLISH AND AMERICAN SONG-BIRDS 



rpiHE charm of the songs of birds, like that of a 

 -^ nation's popular airs and hymns, is so little 

 a question of intrinsic musical excellence, and so 

 largely a matter of association and suggestion, or of 

 subjective coloring and reminiscence, that it is per- 

 haps entirely natural for every people to think their 

 own feathered songsters the best. What music 

 would there not be to the homesick American, in 

 Europe, in the simple and plaintive note of our 

 bluebird, or the ditty of our song sparrow, or the 

 honest carol of our robin ; and what, to the European 

 traveler in this country, in the burst of the black- 

 cap, or the redbreast, or the whistle of the merlin! 

 The relative merit of bird-songs can hardly be set- 

 tled dogmatically; I suspect there is very little of 

 what we call music, or of what could be noted on 

 the musical scale, in even the best of them; they 

 are parts of nature, and their power is in the degree 

 in which they speak to our experience. 



When the Duke of Argyll, who is a lover of the 

 birds and a good ornithologist, was in this country, 

 he got the impression that our song-birds were 

 inferior to the British, and he refers to others of 



