INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC 105 



as his green cousin, who laughs with hilarious gusto by 

 aid of the same instrument as other birds, the syrinx or 

 musical box, composed by its vocal chords. I do not 

 deny the bird s guttural capacity ; indeed, it is exceptional. 

 If a young bird falls from the opening of the nest, as 

 happened one day in a Herefordshire garden, the unfor 

 tunate screams so loudly that it may be mistaken for the 

 human child. The lesser spotted woodpecker, which 

 also is reckoned among the drummers, has a call not 

 very unlike a blackbird s alarm notes. The greater 

 spotted woodpecker is therefore capable of making 

 spring noises with his vocal chords ; but that he also 

 makes them instrumentally by tapping on wood in the 

 manner of a tom-tom is a general belief too certain to be 

 questioned. Last year one of the drummers was watched 

 at close quarters by a family of ornithologists, old and 

 young. They did more than watch the bird hammering 

 the dead bough as a blacksmith his anvil and with as 

 cheerful a noise : they put their ears close to the trunk 

 of the tree, and found the sound came to them with 

 greater emphasis. All doubt of the mechanical nature of 

 the music, so to call it, was removed. 



This handsome bird has multiplied exceedingly during 

 the last few years. For example, two of them have been 

 drumming persistently every morning and every evening 

 on a delectable hill just outside Oxford ; and it is to be 

 hoped that the efficient Trust which has preserved this 

 wood a haunt also of the nightingale will not in its 

 zeal for modern forestry destroy all the trees that have 

 passed their best and are used for timber dwellings by 

 owl and woodpecker. The too efficient forester working 

 within a pale of barbed wire may be a poor friend to the 

 naturalist. Now in that particular wood the tapping on 

 the timber is a constant spring sound ; but no black and 



