BIRD-SONGS 



woods, then one feels that it merits all the fine things 

 that can be said of it. 



One of our popular writers and lecturers upon 

 birds told me this incident: He had engaged to 

 take two city girls out for a walk in the country, to 

 teach them the names of the birds they might see 

 and hear. Before they started, he read to them 

 Henry van Dyke's poem on the song sparrow, — 

 one of our best bird-poems, — telling them that the 

 song sparrow was one of the first birds they were 

 likely to hear. As they proceeded with their walk, 

 sure enough, there by the roadside was a sparrow 

 in song. The bird man called the attention of his 

 companions to it. It was some time before the un- 

 practiced ears of the girls could make it out ; then 

 one of them said (the poem she had just heard, I 

 suppose, still ringing in her ears), "What! that 

 little squeaky thing ? " The sparrow's song meant 

 nothing to her at all, and how could she share the 

 enthusiasm of the poet ? Probably the warble of 

 the robin, or the call of the meadowlark or of the 

 highhole, if they chanced to hear them, meant no 

 more to these girls. If we have no associations with 

 these sounds, they will mean very little to us. Their 

 merit as musical performances is very slight. It is as 

 signs of joy and love in nature, as heralds of spring, 

 and as the spirit "of the woods and fields made audi- 

 ble, that they appeal to us. The drumming of the 

 woodpeckers and of the ruffed grouse give great 

 31 



