Notes. 257 



NOTE B. On the Songs of Birds, (pp. 48 and 149.) 



As I have some musical knowledge, and have given some 

 attention to the music of birds' songs, it may be worth while to 

 add one or two remarks on a subject which is as difficult as it 

 is pleasing. I need hardly say that birds do not sing in our 

 musical scale. Attempts to represent their song by our notation, 

 as is done, for example, in Mr. Harting's Birds of Middlesex, 

 are almost always misleading. Birds are guided in their song 

 by no regular succession of intervals ; in other words, they use 

 no scale at all. Their music is of a totally different kind to 

 ours. Listen to a Robin in full song; he, like most other 

 birds, hardly ever dwells for a moment on a single note, but 

 modifies it by slightly raising or lowering the pitch, and slides 

 insensibly into another note, which is perhaps instantly forsaken 

 for a subdued chuckle or trill. The same quality of song may 

 also be well observed in the Black-cap and in the Willow 

 Warbler : the song of the latter descends in an almost imper- 

 ceptible manner through fractions of a tone, as I have already 

 observed on page 48. Strange as it may seem, the songs of 

 birds may perhaps be more justly compared with the human 

 voice when speaking, than with a musical instrument, or with 

 the human voice when singing ; and we can no more represent 

 a bird's song in musical notation, than the inflections of Mr. 

 Gladstone's voice when delivering one of his great speeches. 

 The human voice when speaking is musically much freer than 

 when singing ; it is not tied down to tones and semitones. 



If we remember that there are in our scale only twelve notes 

 to the octave, and that between each of these an infinite number 

 of sounds are possible, we shall get an idea of the endless 

 variety which is open to the birds, and also, but in a less 

 degree, to the human speaking voice. 



