APPENDIX. 121 
Newness oF THE Frevp. — Contin. 
“TI have seen no bird music that is not strained and un- 
natural; but I must say nothing ‘out loud’ Iam familiar 
with the songs of these birds, and find nothing here that 
I have heard. Now then, tell me who the author is and 
when he wrote.” — Letter from S. P. C. in response to an article 
extracted from an American Magazine of 1858, and sent him by the 
editor of the present volume. Date, November, 1889. 
Our author, unfamiliar as he was with the literature 
of bird music, regarded himself as standing pretty much 
alone; the field was to him decidedly new. Would he 
have felt differently had he made an extended survey 
of it? W. J. Broderip published the third edition of 
his “Zodlogical Recreations” in 1857, giving in one of 
the earlier chapters the pith of the famous paper by 
Daines Barrington, published in the Philosophical Trans- 
actions of 1773. He says: — 
“The Hon. Daines Barrington, who paid much attention to 
this subject, remarks that some passages of the song in a few 
kinds of birds correspond with the intervals of our musical 
scale; but that much the greater part of such a song is not 
capable of musical notation. He attributes this to the follow- 
ing causes: first, because the rapidity is often so great, and it 
is also so uncertain where they may stop, that it is impossible 
to reduce the passages to form a musical bar in any time what- 
soever ; secondly, on account of the pitch of most birds being 
considerably higher than the most shrill notes of instruments 
of the greatest compass; and lastly, because the intervals used 
by birds are commonly so minute that we cannot judge at all 
of them from the more gross intervals into which our musical 
octave is divided. 
