116 WOOD NOTES WILD. 
NEWNESS OF THE FIELD. — Contin. 
“Have received and carefully considered the maga- 
zine article (Henderson, W. J., Sportsman’s Music, in 
the Century Magazine, xxxiv. 413-417). The author, 
claiming to be a ‘musician,’ asserts, to begin with, that 
‘there is nothing in Nature that resembles music;’ that 
the succession of sustained sounds is not heard, — that 
‘the peculiarity of the songs of all birds is that they 
never sustain notes.’ Then he quotes the Rev. Mr. Haweis 
to support him, and the reverend takes the cuckoo — the 
English cuckoo, I suppose —as the best example. Says 
he ‘sings a true third, and sometimes a sharp third, or 
even a fourth,’ and this is the ‘nearest approach to 
music in Nature.’ Of all the birds to select for the pur- 
pose, the cuckoo of any country would seem to be the 
very last. I know nothing about the English cuckoo, but 
our cuckoo never sings a third, ‘true’ or false, nor a 
‘fourth.’ His song is a perfect monotone excepting an 
occasional drop of a half-step. That is the whole of it. 
The writer of this article has a ‘profound sense’ of the 
impossibility of doing justice to the quail’s song. Old 
Hundred is not plainer than the notes of the quail, and 
no idea is given, in either of the two examples, of the 
notes of the quail The same is true of all that is said of 
the meadow lark.” — C.,S. P., ina letter dated July, 1887. 
For newness of the field, contin., see Index, Newness, etc. 
For intervals of English cuckoo’s song, see Index, Cuckoo. 
