BIRDS AT THEIR BEST 25 



lost, that they grow faint and indistinct, and become 

 increasingly difficult to recall. They can no longer 

 listen to those over- sea notes and songs as they can, 

 mentally, to the cuckoo's call in spring, the wood- 

 owl's hoot, to the song of the skylark and of the tree- 

 pipit, the reeling of the night-jar and the startling 

 scream of the woodland jay, the deep human-like 

 tones of the raven, the inflected wild cry of the 

 curlew, and the beautiful wild whistle of the widgeon, 

 heard in the silence of the night on some lonely mere. 



The reason is that these, and numberless more, 

 are the sounds of the bird life of their own home and 

 country ; the living voices to which they listened 

 when they were young and the senses keener than 

 now, and their enthusiasm greater ; they were in 

 fact heard with an emotion which the foreign species 

 never inspired in them, and thus heard, the images 

 of the sounds were made imperishable. 



In my case the foreign were the home birds, and 

 on that account alone more to me than all others ; 

 yet I escaped that prejudice which the British 

 naturalist is never wholly without the notion that 

 the home bird is, intrinsically, better worth listening 

 to than the bird abroad. Finally, on coming to this 

 country, I could not listen to the birds coldly, as an 

 English naturalist would to those of, let us say. 



