126 BIRDS IN TOWN AND VILLAGE 



his own preferences. Still, after re-reading Words- 

 worth's lines to " The Green Linnet," it is curious, 

 to say the least of it, to turn to some prose writer — 

 an authority on birds, perhaps — to find that this 

 species, whose music so charmed the poet, has for 

 its song a monotonous croak, which it repeats at 

 short intervals for hours without the shghtest varia- 

 tion — a dismal sound which harmonizes with no 

 other sound in nature, and suggests nothing but 

 heat and weariness, and is of all natural sounds the 

 most irritating. To this writer, then — and there are 

 others to keep him in countenance — ^the greenfinch 

 as a vocalist ranks lower than the lowest. One can 

 only wonder (and smile) at such extreme divergences. 

 To my mind all natural sounds have in some 

 measure an exhilarating effect, and I cannot get rid 

 of the notion that so it should be with every one of 

 us ; and when some particular sound, or series of 

 sounds, that has more than this common character, 

 and is distinctly pleasing, is spoken of as nothing 

 but disagreeable, irritating, and the rest of it, I am 

 inclined to think that there is something wrong with 

 the person who thus describes it; that he is not 

 exactly as Nature would have had him, but that 

 either during his independent life, or before it at 

 some period of his prenatal existence, something 

 must have happened to distune him. All this, I 

 freely confess, may be nothing but fancy. In any 



