1 5 ° C. N. Allen on Songs of the Western Meadow Lark • 
produces them. These tones have a trace of the quality of a rich, 
pure alto voice, when singing below “middle C.” The relative 
pitch is generally correct ; though a few of the songs may be out 
of the way a semitone or even a tone. 
The melodies of these various forte songs are correct. Many 
years of familiarity with the study of music enables me to speak 
positively on this point. But the bird occasionally varies the 
melody in one or two notes. In No. 8, the lower “A” is some- 
times changed to “B.” Numbers 7 and 13, cited above, also 
furnish a case in point. 
I am somewhat uncomfortably conscious that this paper sadly 
conflicts with some of the statements made in a most delightful 
article in the May number of “ Harper’s Monthly Magazine,” 
1878, entitled “ Song Birds of the West.” But may it not be 
that the eminent writer is not a musician ? 
He speaks of the song of the Western Lark ; there are many 
very distinct songs, as this paper shows. I cannot apply the writer’s 
syllables, “ tung , tung , tung -ah — twil'lah, twil'lah^ timg ,” 
to any of the bird’s songs that I have heard, and get them to fit 
in any way. Even notes, the best representatives of musical 
sounds, give but a partial idea of these melodies : how much less 
will syllables accomplish it ! While the songs of some Oscines 
seem to contain sounds which are accompanied by a kind of 
articulation (that of the “Shore Lark” being one), andean be 
partially represented by syllables, I have as yet heard nothing of 
the kind in any of the songs of the bird under consideration. 
They are sung in tones pure and simple, which have no more 
articulation or syllabication than dhose of the flute or violin. 
Then the first part of a song, supposing “ tung , tung , tung- 
ah ” to indicate it, never has, in so far as I have heard, more than 
two notes in succession which are “ alike intone and accent:” 
nor have I been able to identify the “sort of half trill” in the 
second part; although I can, in some songs, detect the “ rising 
inflection,” and several songs end in a note similar to the first. 
Regarding the piano song, I should have said above that it is by 
no means as frequently sung as the forte songs. A bird will 
repeat a forte song a score of times, leaving silent intervals 
between the repetitions, instead of filling them in, as he some- 
times does, with the piano song. 
I have frequently heard the bird sing a forte song while on the 
wing, sometimes repeating it twice before alighting. 
