222 REPORT OF MEETINGS FOR 1902 



the parti-coloured birds upon their airy isolated platform. 

 You would swear that there was not room to set down one 

 more of them ; and if it chance that a bird has vacated her 

 post, her reception once more into the ranks will necessitate 

 a general slight shifting and shaking down. On lower levels, 

 upon available ledges and brackets at the sides of the rock, 

 are seen the dove-grey wings of nesting kittiwakes. But to 

 the platform guillemots only are admitted. And from the 

 closely congregated mass a querulous crying goes up. Eising 

 and falling, it yet ceases never — steadfast and persevering as 

 the very murmur of the sea which "cannot be quiet." 



Couched on the sunny cliif-head, one may bend the ear, 

 make a sound-conductor of the hand, let the wind blow this 

 music towards one, and strive to penetrate its character. A 

 recent writer upon bird-life has asserted that the sweetest 

 note produced by any liird is that of the fulmar petrel, and 

 I have known a skilled ornithologist compare the said note 

 to the preliminary murmur of the guillemot when about to 

 raise her cry. On the present writer's ear the effect is utterly 

 diverse. Inland-bred, he can recognise no tonal beauty save 

 in the note of inland birds. The rapture of the thrush in 

 May-time, the joyous whistle of the blackbird, the prolonged 

 wail of the nightingale, and, that most fairy-like of sounds, 

 the snatch of song uttered hj the reed-warbler when disturbed 

 by night ; these charm the ear with a beauty of tone which 

 is abstract and absolute. Even the restricted compass of the 

 chiff-chaff, the solitary interval of the cuckoo, the monotonous 

 trill and cadence of the yellow-ammer, have their proper 

 musical value. But the beauty of the sea-birds' cry is one 

 entirely of suggestion ; its appeal is through the imagination, 

 not the senses. Speaking in human terms, it occupies musical 

 ground ignored by Mozart, appropriated by Wagner. And 

 its suggestions are of desolate seas and savage shores ; of 

 an eager, maybe joyous life ; but of one, unlike that of the 

 woodland songster, entirely alien from and indifferent to 

 our own. 



