362 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLV. No. 1163 



DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE 



THE SONG OF THE GRASSHOPPER SPARROW 



(AMMODRAMUS SAVANNARUM 



AUSTRALIS MAYNARD) 



For many years I have been interested in 

 the song of the grasshopper sparrow. This 

 sparrow appears to be fairly common around 

 Washington, D. 0. During the early part 

 of the sumTner of 1916 I frequently heard its 

 peculiar, insect-like, lisping notes, for the 

 bird is more often heard than seen. One male, 

 however, almost invariably perched upon a 

 certain cedar tree in the ISTational Cemetery, 

 near the McClellan Gate, to deliver its dainty, 

 high-pitched it-tip-i-ts-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e. This 

 particular bird sang in this manner for many 

 mornings, always singing from the same fa- 

 vorite tree. 



For many years I was familiar with this 

 field sparrow around my home town, Oxford, 

 Mass., and have often heard delivered a more 

 complete song than the one usitally described 

 by practically all observers and ornithologists. 

 The usual song, it-tip-i-ts-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e, 

 frequently terminated with a most remarkable 

 series of faint, rapidly uttered, wild, ecstatic, 

 flowing, warbler-like notes — an exuberant 

 chippety-chippety-ehippety, continued for six 

 or eight seconds. This last performance ap- 

 pears to have been a sort of passion song and 

 is remotely like a tiny edition of the oven 

 bird's passionate outburst as it mounts into 

 the air above the woodlands at night. This 

 more complete song is not as commonly heard 

 as the lisping monotone and I have never yet 

 heard it elsewhere than in ISTew England. I 

 feel, however, that this wonderful little twit- 

 ^ tering rhapsody is a part of its true song, at 

 least in some portions of its range. 



In the literature referring to the habits of 

 this sparrow I find only two references to this 

 variation in its song. In " Birds of ISTew 

 York," Memoir 12, Vol. 2, by Elon Howard 

 Eaton, an excellent description of the song by 

 Gerald Thayer is cited. Thayer interprets the 

 usual song as " sit-tit-ts-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e." 

 He does not regard this as the true song of 

 the grasshopper sparrow, however. The true 

 song which he heard was a " long, rambling 



twitter," uttered in a tone similar to that of 

 the insect-like notes given above, although not 

 as loud, and continuing as long as 10 to 12 

 seconds. Eaton says: 



This rolling twitter is uttered when the male and 

 female are flying together over the meadows or 

 seated near each other. 



L. A. Fuertes has also heard this more com- 

 plete song of the grasshopper sparrow and 

 likens it to the twittering song of the prairie 

 horned-lark heard at a considerable distance. 

 H. A. Allaed 



"Washington, D. C. 



decorative and pictorial art 



To THE Editor of Science : As an artist, 

 I was interested in the quotation on art, used 

 as an apt illustration in the interesting article, 

 " Education after the War," by Messrs. 

 Franklin and MaclSTutt, in Science of Decem- 

 ber 15. The argument is based on a miscon- 

 ception of the relative values of decorative 

 and pictorial art; a misconception which is 

 entirely modem. The Greek or medieval 

 potter or weaver would have been much sur- 

 prised if, when he was decorating a jar or a 

 fabric with conventional forms, he had been 

 told that his art was less " living " than that 

 of the picture maker. Pictorial art is nn 

 higher or more alive than decorative art; it 

 is simply a different expression of the artist's 

 feeling for the beautiful. 



The artist who designed the angel, prob- 

 ably in mosaic, illustrated in the article, de- 

 sired to fill a given space with a symmetrical 

 arrangement of line, form and color, which 

 would be pleasing to the eye. As he was 

 decorating a church, this arrangement took 

 the form, or rather became the symbol, of an 

 angel. He pointed the thumbs because the 

 pattern was thus improved and he put red 

 spots on the hands because he wanted some 

 bright color in that particular place. (Though 

 for the matter of that, I know of no data 

 which warrant our concluding that angels 

 haven't pointed thumbs or red spots on their 

 palms!) If he had been decorating a ban- 

 queting hall, he would have used some symbol 

 of conviviality, such as grapes, or a figure of 

 Bacchus, or whatever symbol was best adapted 



