Bird Music in South America. 149 



ourselves of this powerlessness ; in my case the 

 saddening knowledge was forced on me in such a 

 way that escape was impossible. No person at a 

 distance from England could have striven harder 

 than I did, by inquiring of those who knew and by 

 reading ornithological works, to get a just idea of 

 the songs of British birds. Yet all my pains were 

 wasted, as I found out afterwards when I heard 

 them, and when almost every song came to me as a 

 surprise. It could not have been otherwise. To 

 name only half a dozen of the lesser British melo- 

 dists: the little jets of brilliant melody spurted out 

 by the robin ; the more sustained lyric of the wren, 

 sharp, yet delicate ; the careless half -song half- 

 recitative of the common warbler; the small frag- 

 ments of dreamy aerial music emitted by the wood 

 wren amidst the high translucent foliage ; the 

 hurried, fantastic medley of liquid and grating 

 sounds of the reed warbler ; the song, called by 

 some a twitter, of the swallow, in which the quick, 

 upleaping notes seem to dance in the air, to fall 

 more than one at a time on the sense, as if more 

 than one bird sang, spontaneous and glad as the 

 laughter of some fairy-like, unimaginable child 

 who can give any idea of such sounds as these with 

 such symbols as words ! It is easy to say that a 

 song is long or short, varied or monotonous, that a 

 note is sweet, clear, mellow, strong, weak, loud, 

 shrill, sharp, and so on ; but from all this we get 

 no idea of the distinctive character of the sound, 

 since these words describe only class, or generic 



