APPENDIX. 135 



GENESIS OF BIRD SONG. Contin. 



what the avian race has endured since " first Archaeopteryx felt the feath- 

 ers begin to bud in his arms ! What a long, slow, hesitating, faltering 

 current of development, from a scaly amphibian of the paleozoic time, 

 up, up, to the glorious state of the nightingale and the mocking-bird ! l 



These specimens, if imagination carry us not too far, seem to us direct 

 imitations of some wilder melodies of birds, probably of the nightingale ; 

 and we could produce others of a similar nature, to us equally striking. 



" But we beg the cuckoo's pardon ; we had almost left him out of the 

 catalogue of professors. The cuckoo, we are convinced, has furnished 

 an important hint to the human race. 



" The cuckoo has but two notes at his command ; these notes are al- 

 ways the same, and strictly appreciable ; and their interval is invariably 

 that of the minor third, sung downwards : 



Mr i c i 



" Here again, the Big- wigs of harmony have written volumes in search 

 of the origin and foundation of the minor scale, when they might have 

 found it in every copse. How the great Tartini, and a dozen others, 

 have tugged at the problem! Perhaps they were family-men. The 

 minor third is all that is necessary for the formation of the minor scale ; 

 the other intervals we make free with from the major." New Mo. Mag., 

 vol. vii., 1823, p. 303. 



" Birds were assuredly the most ancient music-masters. And even to 

 this day, with all our boasted refinement, all our natural and artificial 

 exertions, who will be bold enough to assert that either Mrs. Billington, 

 the delight of the present age, or Farinelli, the admiration of the last, 

 ever approached the excellence of these instinctive musicians, either in 

 fertility of imagination, in the brilliancy of their shake, or in neatness of 

 execution 1 " Burgh, A. : Anecdotes of Music, etc. (London, 1814), vol. 1. p. 13, 

 note. 



But, like all the good thoughts, this thought is very old. The antici- 

 pating magaziner was in turn anticipated : 



" At liquidas avium voces imitarier ore 

 Ante fuit raulto, quam laevia carmina cantu 

 Concelebrare homines possent, aureisque juvare." 



Lucretius, lib. v. line 1378. 



See Gardiner, W. : Music of Nature, chapter xii. 



1 See Allen, G. : Ancestry of Birds (Longman's Mag., vol. Hi., Jan- 

 uary, 1884, pp. 284-298) ; also Rhoads, S. N., in Am. Nat., vol. xxiii., 



