168 WOOD NOTES WILD. 
WH8HIPPOORWILL. — Contin. 
good opportunities with him.” —G.,, S.P.,, in a letter dated 
September, 1886. 
“Rhythmical chain.” See Index, Rhythm. 
Flagg says that the similarity between the notes of this 
bird and those of the quail is so great that they might 
be taken as identical. As here given, both the rhythm 
and the intervals are very different. (Jn his A Year with 
the Birds, pp. 197-198.) 
Oriole. — Variations in bird-song. (See p. 71.) 
One of the foremost among our naturalists, Mr. J. A. 
Allen, had the good fortune to hear an unusual oriole song. 
Speaking of the variation in the vocal powers of birds of 
the same species, he says: — 
“ But the strangest example of this sort I have noticed, I think, was 
the case of an Oriole (Icterus Baltimore) that I heard at Ipswich last 
season. So different were its notes from the common notes of the Balti- 
more that I failed entirely to refer them to that bird till I saw the author. 
So much, however, did it resemble a part of the song of the Western 
Meadow Lark (Sturnella magna; S. neglecta, Aud.) that it at once not only 
recalled that bird, but the wild, grassy, gently undulating primitive prairie 
landscape where I had heard it, and with which the loud, clear, rich, mellow 
tones of this beautiful songster so admirably harmonize. This bird I re- 
peatedly recognized from the peculiarity of its notes during my several days’ 
stay at this locality. Aside from such unusual variations as this, which we 
may consider as accidental, birds of unquestionably the same species, as the 
Crow, the Blue Jay, the Towhee, and others, at remote localities, as New 
England, Florida, Iowa, etc., often possess either general differences in 
their notes and song, easily recognizable, or certain notes at one of these 
localities never heard at the others, or an absence of some that are else- 
where familiar. This is perhaps not a strange fact, since it is now so well 
known that birds of the same species present certain well marked varia- 
tions in size according to the latitude and elevation above the sea of the 
locality at which they were born, and that they vary considerably, though 
doubtless within a certain range, in many structural points at one and the 
