114 WOOD NOTES WILD. 



NEWNESS OF THE FIELD. Contin. 



my undertaking. Poor Audubon ! all through his big 

 book he laments his inability to describe the songs of 

 the charming birds. Flagg has given a few specimens. 

 He thinks there can be no more of their songs copied. 1 

 Audubon was a wonder, but Wilson is, to my mind, the 

 most charming of the writers on the birds. The two men 

 were at work at the same time, and were well along with 

 their great undertakings before they knew anything of 

 each other. So it is ; one can hardly have a new thought 

 all to himself. If I had started this bird music twenty- 

 five years back, I should have been all alone ; I don't lack 



much of it now." C., S. P., in a letter dated February, 1886. 



Dr. Golz, formerly First President of the German 

 General Ornithological Society (Allgemeine .Deutsche 



1 There are those who think that none of the bird-songs can be 

 copied : 



" 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 

 1 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." - Fowler, W. W. : A Year with the Birds, p. 257. London, 1889. 



"Having been myself musical from my very cradle, and having made 

 long and frequent observations of the songs of birds, I have come to the 

 decided conclusion that the natural songs of English birds (the only birds 

 with which in a state of nature I am acquainted) are never capable of 

 musical notation, are never, in fact, in tune with our musical scale. 

 People may be startled by such an assertion, which is, in other words, 

 that all birds sing out of tune." R., M. H. : Songs of Birds. Notes and 

 Queries, 3d set. vol. xii., Aug. 3, 1867. (See Index ; Pole, W.) 



