208 WOOD NOTES WILD. 
D. H. BECKLER. 
(Music of the Birds, in “ Die Gartenlaube ” for 1867, pp., 558-559.) 
(Names of the birds are not given, simply the localities where the songs 
were taken). 
DARLING Downs. Heard frequently. 
Al 
A 
. 
1 There is something about the very look of these notes, from the 
pen of a German traveller in Australia, that leads one to believe in their 
accuracy. This reporter, if no ornithologist (kein Zoologe) is indisputa- 
bly a musician. Unable, in many instances, to so much as catch a glimpse 
of the singer, to say nothing of learning his name, he is concerned solely 
with the voices he heard. Intent on correcting a prevalent impression in 
Europe that the sweet bird-songs and the fragrant flowers flourish there 
as nowhere else, he comes to the gist of the matter at once: The 
grandest concerts of feathered singers (die grossartigsten Concerte von 
gefiederten Séingern) are to be heard in the clime from which he writes. 
From this he goes on to say, in substance, that, while the patient observer 
can translate the lovely twittering (liebliche Gezwitscher) of the birds of 
Germany into words or syllables, he can, with the requisite musical 
knowledge, bring the melodies of the Australian songsters (die Melod:een 
der luftigen Sanger Australiens) into our note-system with the nicest differ- 
ences of tone and the most exact reproduction of the rhythmic movement 
