BIED MUSIC IN SOUTH AMERICA 145 



is not quite the same; that we have so described 

 it only because we have no suitable word; that 

 there is really no suggestion of human feeling 

 in it. 



The old method of spelling bird notes and 

 sounds still finds favor with some easy-going 

 naturalists, and it is possible that those who use it 

 do actually believe that the printed word repre- 

 sents some avian sound to the reader, and that 

 those who have never heard the sound can by this 

 simple means get an idea of it; just as certain 

 arbitrary marks or signs on a sheet of written 

 music represent human sounds. It is fancy and a 

 delusion. We have not yet invented any system 

 of arbitrary signs to represent bird sounds, nor 

 are we likely to invent such a system, because, in 

 the first place, we do not properly know the 

 sounds, and, owing to their number and character, 

 cannot properly know more than a very few of 

 them; and, in the second place, because they are 

 different in each species : and just as our human 

 notation represents solely our human specific 

 sounds, so a notation of one bird's language, that 

 of the skylark, let us say, would not apply to the 

 language of another species, the nightingale, say, 

 on account of the difference in quality and timbre 

 of the two. 



One cause of the extreme difficulty of describing 

 bird sounds so as to give anything approaching 

 to a correct idea of them, lies in the fact that in 

 most of them, from the loudest the clanging 



