150 Ldle Days in Patagonia. 
qualities, not the specific and individual. It some- 
times seems to help us, in describing a song, to give 
_ its feeling, when it strikes us as possessing some 
human feeling, and call it joyous, glad, plaintive, 
tender, and so on; but this is, after all, a rough 
expedient, and, often as not, misleads. Thus, in the 
case of the nightingale, I had been led by reading 
to expect to hear a distinctly plaintive song, and 
found it so far from plaintive that I was swayed to 
the opposite extreme, and pronounced it (with 
Coleridge) aglad song. But by-and-by I dismissed 
this notion as equally false with the other; the 
more I listened the more I admired the purity of 
sound in some notes, the exquisite phrasing, the 
beautiful contrasts; the art was perfect, but there 
was no passion in it all—no human feeling. Feeling 
of some un-human kind there perhaps was, but not 
gladness, such as we imagine in the skylark’s song, 
and certainly not sorrow, noranything sad. Again, 
when we listen toa song that all have agreed to 
call “ tender,” we perhaps recognize some quality 
that faintly resembles, or affects us like, the quality 
of tenderness in human speech or vocal music; but 
if we think for a moment, we are convinced that it 
is not tenderness, that the effect is not quite the 
same; that we have so described it only because 
we have no suitable word; that there is really no 
suggestion of human feeling in it. 
The old method of spelling bird notes and sounds 
still finds favour with some easy-going naturalists, 
and it is possible that those who use it do actually 
