Song Birds and Water Fowl 



as compared with other songs, but in their per- 

 fect ease of imitation, in which they are unri- 

 valled. This is due to their having what the 

 scientist calls the basal element of all musical 

 sound — fixed intonation, definite pitch, pro- 

 duced by extreme rapidity and equidistance of 

 successive sound - waves — that basal element 

 that runs through the entire gamut of musical 

 tone, from its grossest to its most spiritual mani- 

 festation, from the depths of a buzz-saw to the 

 heights of a Jenny Lind. 



The difficulty, usually amounting to an im- 

 possibility, of reproducing bird-songs is partly 

 due to great intricacy or confusion of rhythm, 

 as in any genuine warble, like that of the 

 warbling vireo and wren ; partly due, also, to 

 that surprising and inimitable change of tone- 

 color that passes suddenly over the successive 

 phrases of many a song, and even over the sev- 

 eral notes of the same phrase ; as in the case of 

 the wood thrush, one of whose phrases seems 

 like a flood of golden light, and the next like a 

 stream of sparkling water ; but perhaps the great- 

 est difficulty of all, in reproducing a song, is in 

 the almost incessant conversational slide of the 

 voice — a sort of slippery pitch — instead of the 

 definiteness of strictly musical tones, and in the 



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