INSTRUMENTAL. MUSIC. 371 



Instrumental music. Peacocks and Birds of Paradise rattle their 

 quills together. Turkey-cocks scrape their wings against the 

 ground, and some kinds of grouse thus produce a buzzing sound. 

 Another North American grouse, the Tetrao umhellus, when with 

 his tail erect, his ruffs displayed, "he shows off his finery to the 

 "females, who lie hid in the neighborhood," drums by rapidly 

 striking his wings together above his back, according to Mr. R. 

 Raymond, and not, as Audubon thought, by striking them against 

 his sides. The sound thus produced is compared by some to 

 distant thunder, and by others to the quick roll of a drum. The 

 female never drums, "but flies directly to the place where the 

 "male is thus engaged." The male of the Kalij-pheasant, in the 

 Himalayas, "often makes a singular drumming noise with his 

 "wings, not unlike the sound produced by shaking a stiff piece ol 

 "cloth." On the west coast of Africa the little black-weavers 

 (Ploceus?) congregate in a small party on the bushes round a 

 small open space, and sing and glide through the air with quiv- 

 ering wings, "which make a rapid whirring sound like a child's 

 "rattle." One bird after another thus performs for hours together, 

 but only during the courting-season. At this season and at no 

 other time, the males of certain night-jars (Caprimulgus) make 

 a strange booming noise with their wings. The various species 

 of wood-peckers strike a sonorous branch with their beaks, with 

 so rapid a vibratory movement that "the head appears to be in 

 "two places at once." The sound thus produced is audible at a 

 considerable distance, but cannot be described; and I feel sure 

 that its source would never be conjectured by any one hearing it 

 for the first time. As this jarring sound is made chiefly during 

 the breeding-season, it has been considered as a love-song; but it 

 is perhaps more strictly a love-call. The female, when driven 

 from her nest, has been observed thus to call her mate, who 

 answered in the same manner and soon appeared. Lastly, the 

 male Hoopoe (Upupa epops) combines vocal and instrumental 

 music; ' for during the breeding-season this bird, as Mr. Swinhoe 

 observed, flrst draws in air, and then taps the end of its beak 

 perpendicularly down against a stone or the trunk of a tree, "when 

 "the breath being forced down the tubular bill produces the cor- 

 rect sound." If the beak is not thus struck against some object, 

 the sound is quite different. Air is at the same time swallowed, 

 and the oesophagus thus becomes much swollen; and this probably 

 acts as a resonator, not only with the hoopoe, but with pigeons 

 and other birds."^ 



"2 For the foregoing facts see, on Birds of Paradise, Brehm, 'Thier- 

 leben,' Band Hi. s. 325. On Grouse, Richardson, 'Fauna Bor. Americ. 

 Birds,' pp. 343 and 359; Major W. Ross King, 'The Sportsman in 

 Canada,' 1866, p. 156; Mr. Haymond, in Prof. Cox's 'Geol. Survey of In- 



