56 ON THE BIRDS' HIGHWAY 



Songs of Birds," thoroughly worth any 

 one's reading. In one place he says, and 

 only too truly, that bird songs cannot be 

 written on music paper. To quote his 

 very words " A poet can be translated 

 from his own language into another with 

 some show of success ; but to write the 

 song of a robin ^ on a musical stave is in 

 my opinion not only to translate him but 

 to traduce him." Then he goes on to 

 say: "There is a very plain reason why 

 all such attempts should be futile. The 

 birds use no fixed intervals such as those 

 in our artificial scale ; their voices are 

 wholly free and unfettered by convention, 

 and they can make free use of any of the 

 infinite number of intervals which in real- 

 ity exist between one of our tones and 

 another." It was only a day or two ago 

 I saw a person with a note book with 

 musical staves pasted in on which the 

 songs of birds heard in the field were to 

 be written. If we wish to put in black 

 and white, for others' benefit, bird voices, 

 we must satisfy ourselves by expressing 

 their songs in words, without any attempt 

 at musical description. In a few cases 



^ English robin. 



