134 WOOD NOTES WILD. 
Harmonic AFFINITIES IN Birp Music. — Contin. 
knowledge of the musical scale; and a San Francisco naturalist! is at 
present engaged upon a work in which he hopes to show that the human 
ear posesses in this respect merely a more highly developed form of the 
common vertebrate sensibility. When we reflect upon the purely physi- 
cal and physiological basis, which, as Helmholtz has taught us, underlies 
the musical intervals and the distinctions of harmony and discord, there 
is certainly no reason why they should not be perceived by all the higher 
animals alike, in a greater or less degree.” — Allen, G.: Histhetic Feeling in 
Birds. (Pop. Sci. Mo., vol. xvii., September, 1880, pp. 653-654.) 
Genesis of Bird Song. (See p. 5.) 
“From all we can gather it appears most probable that in its present 
form our song-bird proper — our bird with a song to sing —is not much 
older than man; that he found his song just in time to gladden the ears of 
God’s last and greatest creation; that he struggled through countless ages 
and awful changes in order to fit himself for our entertainment.2 Think 
1 Probably Mr. Xenos Clark, who was at one time on the Pacific Coast. _ 
2 The Rev. Charles Kingsley credits the birds with instruction as well 
as entertainment. In his opinion they set the key-note for the songs 
of the old poets; the medizval bards borrowed liberally from the birds 
(A Charm of Birds, Fraser’s Mag., vol. xxv., June, 1867, p. 802). 
Both Gardiner and Kingsley were anticipated, however, by a nameless 
magaziner : — 
“We have alluded to the rapid passages in the song of birds, the 
succession of soft and loud sounds, the contrast between quick and slow 
notes. Is it quite improbable that these, and perhaps other peculiarities 
in their melodic exertions, may have furnished hints for imitation? or 
must we produce vouchers of crotchets and quavers? Let the following 
bars of a favorite waltz, of German composition, be played on the 
flageolet : — 
