NOTES. 139 



It will be observed that this Act only protects the living bird of all ages, 

 but not the egga : so that bird-nesting may still go on with impunity. But 

 the framera of the Act had very good reasons for omitting this, wanton 

 cruelty as it often is ; for as the offenders are usually of tender age, they 

 must be appealed to rather by education and moral suasion than by the 

 terrors of the law. It lies with the clergyman and the schoolmaster to see 

 that gross cruelty meets with its proper punishment — cruelty such as that 

 which once occurred in my village, where some boys stopped up with clay 

 the hole of a tree in which a Tit had laid her eggs, because it was too 

 small to allow the entrance of the thieving hands. 



The worst kind of bird-nesting is carried on by boys after they leave 

 the village school, when they make this the employment of idle Sundays 

 and holidays. The best remedy for this, and other habits that are worse, 

 is to find other and rational employment for them. Eeading-rooms, games, 

 music, &c., I may remark, are usually out of their reach on Sundays, when 

 most of the mischief is done. 



Note B. On the Songs of Birds. (Pp. 28 and 93.) 



As I have some musicaJ. knowledge, and have given some attention to the 

 music of birds' songs, it may be worth while to add one or two remarks on 

 a subject which is as difficult as it is pleasing. I need hardly say that birds 

 do not sing in our musical scale. Attempts to represent their song by our 

 notation, as is done for example in Mr. Harting's Birds of Middlesex, are 

 almost always misleading. Birds are guided in their song by no regular 

 succession of intervals ; in other words, they use no scale at all. Their 

 music is of a totally different kind to ours. Listen to a Eobin in full song ; 

 he, like most other birds, hardly ever dwells for a. moment on a single 

 note, but modifies it by slightly raising or lowering the pitch, and slides 

 insensibly into another note, which is perhaps instantly forsaken for a 

 subdued chuckle or trill. The same quality of song may also be well 

 observed in the Black-cap and in the Willow Warbler : the song of the 

 latter descends in an almost imperceptible manner through fractions of a 

 tone, as I have already observed on page 27. Strange as it may seem, 

 the songs of birds may perhaps be more justly compared with the human 

 voice when sfeaking, than with a musical instrument, or with the 



