Song Birds and Water Fowl 



chanical means, it would at once sink to the 

 level of offensive noise. Thunder's power to 

 stir the sentiment is chiefly through its asso- 

 ciation with lightning, elevation, cloud, and 

 storm. With such association it is musical ; 

 without it, it is not. The sentiment of sound is 

 thus very often only an echo from accessories. 



The success of any of Nature's sounds, like 

 the success of a remark, lies in its appositeness. 

 Science would extract no music from the buz- 

 zing of a bumble-bee ; but when, in the calm 

 and brightness of a country day, a number of 

 them are hovering about a fragrant syringa-bush, 

 what, if not music, is that drowsy hum that is 

 wafted through the air, without time or tune, 

 uncadenced and unrhythmical ? The tones of 

 Nature take their color from surrounding ob- 

 jects. In a sense we may say that visible beauty 

 thus becomes audibly transformed, and floats 

 into the ear. The very merriment of wedding- 

 bells is in the song of lark and oriole, in the joy- 

 ous atmosphere of June ; and all the melancholy 

 of a funeral march is gathered into a single gust 

 of a November sighing wind. Temperament is 

 the soul's eagerness, and that is the soul of song, 

 be the quality of voice what it may. Through- 

 out Nature's gamut of sounds, there is none 



