122 WOOD NOTES WILD. 
NEWNESS OF THE FIELD. — Coniin. 
‘‘ Barrington defines a bird’s song to be a succession of three 
or more different notes, which are continued without interrup- 
tion during the same interval with a musical bar of four crotch- 
ets in an adagio movement, or whilst a pendulum swings four 
seconds. Now let us see what notes have been detected in the 
song. Observers have marked F natural in woodlarks; A in 
thrushes; C falling to A commonly in the cuckoo; A natural 
in common cocks; B flat ina very large cock; D in some 
owls; B flat in others. Thus we have A, B flat, C, D, and F, 
to which Barrington adds G, from his own observations on a 
nightingale which lived three years in a cage; and he confirms 
the remarks of the observer who furnished him with the list, 
and says he has frequently heard from the same bird C and F. 
To prove the precision of the pitch of these notes, the B flat of 
the spinnet by which he tried them was perfectly in tune with 
the great bell of St. Paul’s. E, then, is the only note wanting 
to complete the scale; but, as he says, the six other notes afford 
sufficient data for making some conjectures with regard to the 
key in which birds may be supposed to sing, as these intervals 
can only be found in the key of F with a sharp third, or that 
of G with a flat third; and he supposed it to be the plaintive 
flat third, that affecting tone which, in the simple ballad, or 
‘wild and sad’ chorus, so comes home to our bosoms... . 
Barrington pronounces in favor of the flat third because he 
agrees with Lucretius that man first learned musical notes 
from birds, and because the cuckoo, whose ‘plain song’ has 
been most attended to, performs it in a flat third.” 
This brings us down to 1857 in England, — indeed, we 
may say on the European continent, —and if we are to 
trust a philosopher thoroughly versed in the structure 
of music, no advance was made, to say the least, in the 
next thirty years. “No one who has taken the very 
