Bird Music in South America. 151 
believe that the printed word represents some avian 
sound to the reader, and that those who have never 
heard the sound can by this simple means get an 
idea of it; just as certain arbitrary marks or signs 
on a sheet of written music represent human sounds. 
It is fancy and a delusion. We have not yet in- 
vented any system of arbitrary signs to represent | 
bird sounds, nor are we likely to invent such a sys- 
tem, because, in the first place, we do not properly 
know the sounds, and, owing to their number and 
character, cannot properly know more than a very 
few of them; and, in the second place, because they 
are different in each species: and just as our human 
notation represents solely our human specific sounds, 
so a notation of one bird’s language, that of the 
skylark, let us say, would not apply to the language 
of another species, the nightingale, say, on account 
of the difference in quality and timbre of the two. 
One cause of the extreme difficulty of describing 
bird sounds so as to give anything approaching to a 
correct idea of them, lies in the fact that in most of 
them, from the loudest—the clanging scream or call 
that may be heard a distance of two or three miles 
—to the faintest tinkling or lisping note that might 
be emitted by a creature no bigger than a fly, there 
is a certain aérial quality which makes them differ 
from all other sounds. Doubtless several causes 
contribute to give them this character. There is 
the great development of the vocal organ, which 
makes the voice, albeit finer, more far-reaching than 
that of other creatures of equal size or larger. The 
