304 NATURAL INSTRUMENTS 



stating a literal truth: the bird's singing organ is 

 an instrument of music, only he carries it within 

 his body instead of attached to his exterior like 

 that of locust and cricket. One recalls Samuel 

 Butler's notion concerning machinery; how that 

 the machine is an extension of or an addition to 

 our own organs, a growth as it were, which has 

 come about just as the organs themselves have come 

 in response to a need, a desire. That is how it is 

 with the locust's instrument; and even as his came 

 to the locust so have our instruments come to us 

 and are more like natural growths than any machine. 

 One emanates from the brain, the other from heart 

 and brain, and this last is to man like the flower to 

 the plant. How like it when we trace back the 

 evolutionary history of the one and the other; from 

 the first small inconspicuous beginnings of the flower 

 to the marvellous result — the perfection in form and 

 colour and fragrance ! And the instruments of sound, 

 that have gathered into themselves all the emotions 

 of our lives and return them to us transformed to 

 something inexpressibly beautiful! 



To return to the subject of bird-music and the 

 expression in some of it which constitutes its prin- 

 cipal charm — the human note or quality refined and 

 brightened. We recognise it in several of our common 

 species, the barn or chimney swallow, for example, 

 the pied wagtail, the willow wren, the blackcap, the 

 rock dove, stock dove and ring dove, the wood owl, 

 the cuckoo and, best of all perhaps, in the blackbird. 

 John Davidson, the poet, spoke of the ''blackbirds 



