THE COAST OF SOUTH WALES 21 



immortal gladness of nature. All we can say, as we 

 watch him restlessly flit from one plant head to another, 

 a minute Ahasuerus of the waste, is that unconsciously 

 he seems to gather into his pretty body something of the 

 brooding solitariness of his environment. 



A more profitable reflection comes from observing the 

 character and quality of the song. Like many other 

 birds, the stonechat resumes singing after the moult, 

 even in hard weather. The song is inaudible at any 

 distance, and incapable of being sustained for more than a 

 few notes. But though less varied and exuberant than 

 the wheatear's, it is one of the sweetest in minor bird 

 music — sweeter than the whinchat's, which is harder — a 

 silvery, low and desultory warble. There is a perceptible 

 resemblance in it to the shrilling notes of the robin, but 

 it does not glow like his, and is much more subdued in 

 tone. Now, it is noticeable that the small birds which 

 inhabit rough and stern desert places, smitten by the 

 wind, have a peculiar delicacy and fragility of song — 

 voices of porcelain. Linnet, wheatear, rock and meadow 

 pipit, goldfinch, whinchat — their singing is of a pearly 

 lustre, quite different from the diamond brilliance of the 

 louder and coarser notes of the wood-birds. Among 

 the larger birds, the contrast is achieved more on the 

 plane of colour and form — the luminous whiteness of 

 herring gulls, the roseate breasts of one species of tern, 

 the delicate pencillings of the plumage of curlew, whimbrel 

 and the smaller wading birds, the masterpieces of line 

 in their elegant shapes. It is the same with the flowers, 

 the eyebright and thyme on the sheepwalk, the thrift 

 among the rocks. And the contrasts appear in different 

 terms, one intertwining with another — the slenderness 

 of the harebell accentuating its own and its neighbour's 

 value, the fiery stain of the ragwort relieving and intensi- 

 fying the uncouth and colourless waste, each by its distinct 

 and opposite quality. So the warble of the stonechat, 

 uttered in spring when hovering in the air, and in more 

 meditative autumn from a perch, is an aesthetic device 

 of the most fertile of artists to mingle and relieve her 

 beauties, and is to the rough furze-clad common what 

 the coral bill of the chough is to his black body, and the 



