FAMILY Tvrtid*. 



for a Robin ; notice that the fellow has made his own 

 response to his own motive, a thing which not every bird 

 can do by any means : 



tfllegro agitdt 



Lightly and trippingly. 



The key was a perfectly obvious one and the song 

 though sung in the usual wild, disconnected way of the 

 Robin was excellent in its intervals and its note values 

 I have no record of a better song than that although 

 others equal it. How characteristic it is of the Robin to 

 sing in a nervous, hurried w.iy, without ever n though' 

 of the value of a sustained tone such as that which the 

 Hermit Thrush gives us, and then when something or 

 somebody disturbs him, to resent the interruption with 

 an emphatic remonstrance in the diatonic scale or some- 

 thing akin to it, thus * : 



How natural it is, too, for another fellow to enter the 

 breach and without altering the key, revise the arrange 

 ment of the theme, extend it, and proceed on inde- 

 pendent lines in more insistant tones very nearly as 

 follows : 



* I wish this did not remind one so much of the opening notes of 

 that popular piece, which is doomed to an ephemeral existence, 

 called Hiawatha. 



310 



