84 FAMILIAR LIFE IN FIELD AND POBBST. 



never to return. 

 It was a Baltimore 

 oriole {Icterus gal- 

 lula), and his simple musical phrase was absolutely 

 true in pitch, difEering in this respect from my 

 robin's song. But the most remarkable thing about 

 a really musical oriole — one may not happen to be as 

 melodic as another — is the way he syncopates. Now 

 syncopation in music is equivalent to the dropping of 

 an important note ; one of accent or emphasis. Who 

 has not heard in the streets the shrill fife and drum 

 with the measured boom of the bass drum, and who 

 does not remember the turn the latter makes at the 

 end of a musical phrase ? It sounds as though the 

 next to the last " boom " was dropped in the street, 

 and the drummer, stooping to pick it up, lost a little 

 time and then hurriedly made it up thus : Boom ! 



boom ! boom ! boom ! boom ! boom ! boom ! 



boom-boom ! 



This is a perfect syncope, and it is exactly what 

 the whistling oriole is continually doing. Here is a 

 second instance of dropped notes in a little song I 

 once heard in the Harvard Botanical Garden, Cam- 

 bridge, in May. ■ ■ n .s , f , , . m t . X. — 



But this oriole \ hV tUM^ f\t\\ fTf t 



was not quite so musical as the one I heard in Camp- 

 ton, B". H. 



