BIRDS IN A VILLAGE. 
77 
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, etc., 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 lifetime, or before it, some- 
thing must have happened to distune him. All 
this, I freely confess, may be nothing but fancy. 
In any case, the subject need not keep us longer 
from the greenfinch — that is to say, my greenfinch, 
not another man's. 
From morning until evening all round and about 
the cottage, and out of doors whithersoever I bent 
my steps, from the masses of deep green foliage 
sounded the perpetual airy prattle of these delight- 
ful birds. One had the idea that the concealed 
vocalists were continually meeting each other at 
little social gatherings, where they exchanged 
pretty loving greetings, and indulged in a leafy 
gossip, interspersed with occasional fragments of 
music, vocal and instrumental ; now a long trill — 
a trilling, a tinkling, a sweeping of one minute 
