148 Idle Days in Patagonia. 



Calandria mocking-bird's performance and not be 

 very greatly missed. 



The desire to say something on this subject was 

 strong in me at that time, for, leaving aside the 

 larger question of the bird music of South America, 

 I could not help thinking that these observers had 

 missed the chief excellence of the songsters known 

 to me. But I had no title to speak ; I had not 

 heard the nightingale, song- thrush, blackbird, sky- 

 lark, and all the other members of that famous 

 choir whose melody has been a delight to our race 

 for so many ages ; I was without the standard 

 which others had, and being without it, could not 

 be absolutely sure that a mistake had been made, 

 and that the opinion I had formed of the melodists 

 of my own district was not too high. Now that I 

 am familiar with the music of British song-birds in 

 a state of nature the case is different, and I can ex- 

 press myself on the subject without fear and with- 

 out doubt. But I have no intention of speaking in 

 this place of the South American bird music I know, 

 comparing it with that of England. And this for 

 two reasons. One is that I have already written 

 on this subject in Argentine Ornithology and The 

 Naturalist in La Plata. The second reason is 

 because bird music, and, indeed, bird sounds 

 generally, are seldom describable. "We have no 

 symbols to represent such sounds on paper, hence 

 we are as powerless to convey to another the im- 

 pression they make on us as we are to describe the 

 odours of flowers. It is hard, perhaps, to convince 



