APPENDIX. 187 
OrGAN-Birp. — Contin. 
ling in their small canoes along the shady by-paths, as if struck by the 
mysterious sound.” — Hudson, W. H.: South American Bird-music, (Nature, 
vol, xxxiii, pp. 199-201.) 
Solitaire. (JMusicapa armillata, Viellot.) 
' Mr. Hill thought Buffon’s “organist” the same as the 
solitaire. Gosse corrects him on page 202, “Birds of 
Jamaica.” This error admitted, the naturalist of Spanish 
Town has put us greatly in his debt by a description of a 
master singer in Hayti: — 
“ As soon as the first indications of daylight are perceived, even while 
the mists hang over the forests, these minstrels are heard pouring forth 
their wild notes in a concert of many voices, sweet and lengthened like 
those of the harmonica or musical glasses. It is the sweetest, the most 
solemn and most unearthly of all the woodland singing I have ever heard. 
The lofty locality, the cloud-capped heights, to which alone the eagle soars 
in other countries, — so different from ordinary singing-birds in gardens 
and cultivated fields, — combine with the solemnity of the music to excite 
something like devotional associations. The notes are uttered slowly and 
distinctly, with a strangely-measured exactness. Though it is seldom 
that the bird is seen, it can scarcely be said to be solitary, since it rarely 
sings alone, but in harmony or concert with some half-dozen others 
chanting in the same glen. Occasionally it strikes out into such an 
adventitious combination of notes as to form a perfect tune. The time 
of enunciating a single note is that of the semibreve. The quaver is 
executed with the most perfect trill. It regards the major and minor 
cadences, and observes the harmony of counterpoint, with all the pre- 
ciseness of a perfect musician. Its melodies, from the length and dis- 
tinctness of each note, are more hymns than songs. Though the concert 
of singers will keep to the same melody for an hour, each little coterie 
of birds chants a different song, and the traveller by no accident ever 
hears the same tune.’ — Hill, R.: in Gosse, P. H., Birds of Jamaica, pp. 
201-202. 
See Index, Johnston, A. G. 
