148 Idle Days in Patagonia. 
Calandria mocking-bird’s performance and. not be 
very greatly missed. 
The desire to say something on this subject was 
strong in me at that time, for, leaving aside the 
larger question of the bird music of South America, 
I could not help thinking that these observers had 
missed the chief excellence of the songsters known 
tome. But I had no title to speak; I had not 
heard the nightingale, song-thrush, blackbird, sky- 
lark, and all the other members of that famous 
choir whose melody has been a delight to our race 
for so many ages; I was without the standard 
which others had, and being without it, could not 
be absolutely sure that a mistake had been made, 
and that the opinion I had formed of the melodists 
of my own district wag not too high. Now that I 
am familiar with the music of British song-birds in 
a state of nature the case is different, and I can ex- 
press myself on the subject without fear and with- 
out doubt. But I have no intention of speaking in 
this place of the South American bird music I know, 
comparing it with that of England. And this for 
two reasons. One is that I have already written 
on this subject in Argentine Ornithology and The 
Naturalist in La Plata. The second reason is 
because bird music, and, indeed, bird sounds 
generally, are seldom describable. We have no 
symbols to represent such sounds on paper, hence 
we are as powerless to convey to another the im- 
pression they make on us as we are to describe the 
odours of flowers. It is hard, perhaps, to convince 
