FAMILY Icteridas. 



and the most optimistic interpreter could never clear it 

 of a certain plaintive quality. That is wholly due to the 

 bird's habit of slurring his notes. It would be impossible 

 to represent them by dots only a series of curves can 

 describe his indecisive attempts at " hitting rt a tone 

 somewhere at random, thus: 



No writer seems to have sufficiently emphasized this 

 point; indeed, all have apparently neglected it. Words 

 and high-sounding phrases are useless if not meaningless 

 without some adequate demonstration of facts when one 

 attempts to describe a bird's song. Now, at best, it is 

 very difficult to convey an idea of sound on the printed 

 page without proper musical notations; and if such 

 notations are employed and one does not read music, 

 the situation is still unimproved. Evidently, then, it 

 becomes emphatically necessary to present the essential 

 character of a song by some simple means, and make it 

 still plainer by similes. If you will therefore whistle 

 the three curves given above the way they ought to be 

 whistled (providing there is such a thing as a curving 

 whistle) you will get the Meadowlark's song ! In other 

 words, a tone must be given descending or sliding to the 

 first tone below, then repeated with a slide to the fourth 

 tone below, and then repeated the third time exactly as 

 it was given at first. That expresses the essential char- 

 acter of the Meadowlark's music. But that is, of course, 

 one song, and we must remember if fifty of the birds sing 

 there will be fifty songs ! But in every one of them the 

 principle of the slur is absolutely maintained. Yet for 

 all that, even Mr. Cheney fails to place hi his notations 

 of the Meadowlark's song the very essential slurs (i. e., 

 dashes) and grace notes, which would stamp the music 

 at once with its proper character.* It is undoubtedly 

 the case, however, with many musicians, that they take 

 too much for granted, and fail to be explicit. Mr. Chap- 

 man also does not " dash " the beautiful little melody on 



* I ain at a loss to understand why, because he was a most acute 

 observer. 



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