208 



WOOD NOTES WILD. 



D. H. BECKLER. 



(Music of the Birds, in " Die Gartenlaube " for 1867, pp., 558-55 9. 1 ) 



(Names of the birds are not given, simply the localities where the songs 

 were taken). 



DARLING DOWNS. Heard frequently. 



1. e e e e 



2. DARLING DOWNS. 



^ 



lib pause. 



1 There is something about the very look of these notes, from the 

 pen of a German traveller in Australia, that leads one to believe in their 

 accuracy. This reporter, if no ornithologist (kein Zoologe) is indisputa- 

 bly a musician. Unable, in many instances, to so much as catch a glimpse 

 of the singer, to say nothing of learning his name, he is concerned solely 

 with the voices he heard. Intent on correcting a prevalent impression in 

 Europe that the sweet bird-songs and the fragrant flowers flourish there 

 as nowhere else, he comes to the gist of the matter at once ; The 

 grandest concerts of feathered singers (die grossartigsten Concerts von 

 qefiederten Sdngern) are to be heard in the clime from which he writes. 

 From this he goes on to say, in substance, that, while the patient observer 

 can translate the lovely twittering (liebliche Gezuritscher) of the birds of 

 Germany into words or syllables, he can, with the requisite musical 

 knowledge, bring the melodies of the Australian songsters (die Melodieen 

 der lufiigen Sanger Australiens) into our note-system with the nicest differ- 

 ences of tone and the most exact reproduction of the rhythmic movement 



