Bird Music in South America. 149 
ourselves of this powerlessness; in my case the 
saddening knowledge was forced on me in sucha 
way that escape was impossible. No person at a 
distance from England could have striven harder 
than I did, by inquiring of those who knew and by 
reading ornithological works, to get a just idea of 
the songs of British birds. Yet all my pains were 
wasted, as I found out afterwards when I heard 
them, and when almost every song came to me as a 
surprise. It could not have been otherwise. To 
name only half a dozen of the lesser British melo- 
dists: the little jets of brilliant melody spurted out 
by the robin; the more sustained lyric of the wren, 
sharp, yet delicate; the careless half-song half- 
recitative of the common warbler; the small frag- 
ments of dreamy aérial music emitted by the wood 
wren amidst the high translucent foliage; the 
hurried, fantastic medley of liquid and grating 
sounds of the reed warbler; the song, called by 
some a twitter, of the swallow, in which the quick, 
upleaping notes seem to dance in the air, to fall 
more than one at a time on the sense, as if more 
than one bird sang, spontaneous and glad as the 
laughter of some fairy-like, unimaginable child— 
who can give any idea of such sounds as these with 
such symbols as words! It is easy to say that a 
song is long or short, varied or monotonous, that a 
note is sweet, clear, mellow, strong, weak, loud, 
shrill, sharp, and so on; but from all this we get 
no idea of the distinctive character of the sound, 
since these words describe only class, or generic 
