150 Idle Days in Patagonia. 



qualities, not the specific and individual. It some- 

 times seeins to help us, in describing a song, to give 

 its feeling, when it strikes us as possessing some 

 human feeling, and call it joyous, glad, plaintive, 

 tender, and so on ; but this is, after all, a rough 

 expedient, and, often as not, misleads. Thus, in the 

 case of the nightingale, I had been led by reading 

 to expect to hear a distinctly plaintive song, and 

 found it so far from plaintive that I was swayed to 

 the opposite extreme, and pronounced it (with 

 Coleridge) a glad song. But by-and-by I dismissed 

 this notion as equally false with the other; the 

 more I listened the more I admired the purity of 

 sound in some notes, the exquisite phrasing, the 

 beautiful contrasts ; the art was perfect, but there 

 was no passion in it all no 'human feeling. Feeling 

 of some un-human kind there perhaps was, but not 

 gladness, such as we imagine in the skylark's song, 

 and certainly not sorrow, nor anything sad. Again, 

 when we listen to a song that all have agreed to 

 call " tender," we perhaps recognize some quality 

 that faintly resembles, or affects us like, the quality 

 of tenderness in human speech or vocal music ; but 

 if we think for a moment, we are convinced that it 

 is not tenderness, that the effect 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 favour with some easy-going naturalists, 

 and it is possible that those who use it do actually 



