116 WOOD NOTES WILD. 



NEWNESS OF THE FIELD. Contin. 



" Have received and carefully considered the maga- 

 zine article (Henderson, W. J., Sportsman's Music, in 

 the Century Magazine, xxxiv. 413-417). The author, 

 claiming to be a ' musician/ asserts, to begin with, that 

 ' there is nothing in Nature that resembles music ; ' that 

 the succession of sustained sounds is not heard, that 

 'the peculiarity of the songs of all birds is that they 

 never sustain notes/ Then he quotes the Eev. Mr. Haweis 

 to support him, and the reverend takes the cuckoo the 

 English cuckoo, I suppose as the best example. Says 

 he ' sings a true third, and sometimes a sharp third, or 

 even a fourth/ and this is the ' nearest approach to 

 music in Nature/ Of all the birds to select for the pur- 

 pose, the cuckoo of any country would seem to be the 

 very last. I know nothing about the English cuckoo, but 

 our cuckoo never sings a third, ' true ' or false, nor a 

 'fourth/ His song is a perfect monotone excepting an 

 occasional drop of a half-step. That is the whole of it. 

 The writer of this article has a ' profound sense ' of the 

 impossibility of doing justice to the quail's song. Old 

 Hundred is not plainer than the notes of the quail, and 

 no idea is given, in either of the two examples, of the 

 notes of the quail. The same is true of all that is said of 

 the meadow lark." C., S. P., in a letter dated July, 1887. 



For newness of the field, contin., see Index, Newness, etc. 

 For intervals of English cuckoo's song, see Index, Cuckoo. 



