Mttsic and Dancing in Nature, 275 
effect on the ear similar to that which rain does on 
the sight, when the sun shines on and lightens np the 
myriads of falling drops all falling one way. In this 
manner the birds sing for hours, rnthont intermission, 
every day. Then the passion of love infects them ; 
the pleasant choir breaks up, and its ten thousand 
members scatter wide over the surrounding fields 
and pasture lands. Daring courtship the male has 
a feeble, sketchy music, but his singing is then ac- 
companied with very charming love antics. His 
circlings about the hen-bird ; his numberless ad- 
vances and retreats, and little soarings above her 
when his voice swells with importunate passion ; his 
fluttering lapses back to earth, where he lies prone 
with outspread, tremulous wings, a suppliant at her 
feet, his languishing voice meanwhile dying down to 
lispings — all these apt and graceful motions seem to 
express the very sickness of the heart. But the 
melody during this emotional period is nothing. 
After the business of pairing and nest-building is 
over, his musical displays take a new and finer form. 
He sits perched on a stalk above the grass, and at 
intervals soars up forty or fifty yards high ; rising, 
he utters a series of long melodious notes ; then he 
descends in a graceful spiral, the set of the motion- 
less wings giving him the appearance of a slowly- 
falling parachute ; the voice then also falls, the notes 
coming lower, sweeter, and more expressive until 
he reaches the surface. After alighting the song 
continues, the strains becoming longer, thinner, and 
clearer, until they dwindle to the finest threads of 
sound and faintest tinklings, as from a cithern 
touched by fairy fingers. The great charm of the 
T 2 
