4 BRITISH BIRDS. [vol. viii. 



which is so very frequent among birds : example, the 

 Canary. 



til 



for tones with a strong mingling of non-musical sounds ; 



tTI 



for sound essentially non-musical : such sounds in musical 

 notation have always been rendered by notes, e.g. the 

 parts for drum and kettledrum. 



Further, we place, if possible, the phonetic impression 

 under the notes — that is, the syllable -writing. This 

 form of writing has until recently been employed with 

 us in Germany as a method in itself, but it has proved 

 entirely insufficient when used alone. 



As the pitch of bird-voices in the same strophe can 

 be very varied (for example, the sudden jumps of three 

 octaves of the Great Reed- Warbler) ; as, further, birds 

 do not always keep to the intervals well known to us — 

 for example, within the limits of a minor-second thej^ 

 breathe three or more notes — we find it practical to 

 employ a system of three hnes, each of which answers 

 to a fixed key of well-known bird-notes. The lowest 

 line, C3, answers to the key of the Cuckoo ; the middle, 

 C4, to the middle key of the Canary ; the upper, C6, 

 equals the pitch of the delicate " tsi-tsi " calls of the 

 Tits (Tit-line — ■" Meisenlinie "). As by far the greater 

 number of all bird-tones range between C4 and C6, the 

 mode of registering strophes between these Imes is clear 

 and also gives a good idea of the most likely definition 

 of the pitch and the intervals, which so often differ 

 entirely from those of human music ; again, it permits 

 us to estimate the whole -sounds according to their 

 pitch and to put it into a kind of note-system. What 

 lies between the lines C3 and C4 we generally place in the 



