February Singers 



thing strange from within, and it is less a trans- 

 formation than a revelation. 



By the middle of February the chaffinch is 

 heard trilling from the oaks, and among the furze- 

 sprays on the common the yellowhammer strains 

 to gain his full summer song. It takes some days 

 of practice, and of the impulse of kindling spring, 

 before the yellowhammer can complete his trill 

 with the two last plaintive notes. On the first day 

 when he sings, he will attain it, perhaps, once in 

 ten times. Chaffinches, too, often deliver their 

 roulades in a scamped and imperfect form in the 

 earliest days of spring ; but at all times there is a 

 great difference in their execution. This has made 

 them the favourite bird of the London working 

 man for the singing matches held between caged 

 specimens. As the tide of spring mounts daily 

 with the increasing light, it swells the bud upon 

 the bough and quickens in the song-bird the passion 

 which finds vent in song. On the same morning 

 when the primroses open freely in the garden 

 we know that the chaffinches will be singing for the 

 first time in miles of sun-chequered copse. Nor is 

 the change wrought by spring only a matter of 

 external observation ; for humanity feels the same 

 incitement, and sometimes answers to it in the same 

 way by song. Under the firm striations of the 

 February sky the crow-boy on the fenceless corn- 

 lands, with his ninth spring tingling in his blood, 

 shouts down the skylarks with his own cheery 

 cacophony. A natural product of open-air spring 

 vitality, the crow-boy's music is as welcome, and 



