35 $ 
SONGS OF BIRDS. 
discordant scream of the Peacock, or the simple, 
though penetrating note (twee) of the Creeper, and 
the plaintive melody of the Nightingale, or the 
musical performance of the Song-thrush. But to 
augment the beauty of the universe, Nature has 
bestowed on certain species of this class the power 
of emitting intonations agreeable to the ears of man¬ 
kind, and these we term by way of pre-eminence, 
songs. 
Birds seem to me capable of expressing them¬ 
selves with regard to their appetites, and with 
reference to their feelings of enjoyment and pain. 
It is not only accordant with reason, but in accord¬ 
ance with observed facts for us to refer the genera¬ 
lity of their songs to pleasurable sensations, but I 
believe that some few of the less pretending vocal¬ 
ists may utter sounds long denominated songs, 
from associations connecting them with those of 
better execution and with seasons of gladness to 
the human heart, which are rather attributable 
to hunger or to some feeling of necessity. 
Yet naturalists have not been content to ascribe 
these songs to agreeable emotions, but have incon¬ 
siderately asserted that they were due to love, and 
devotion of the one sex (male) to the other. Inde¬ 
pendently of reasons hereafter to be stated, it seems 
to me to be a violation of the natural barrier of 
separation between the minds of brutes and our own 
mental constitutions and affections to allow those 
kindly sentiments to the former, which are not 
always to be found in man, and for deficiency in 
which he is so frequently condemned. But if songs 
are indicative of love, and love only, how comes it 
that all birds were not equally endowed ? how is 
it that the language of love is not at all uniform in 
the different species, and that the individuals of 
some species, as the Thrush,differ continually in the 
wordings of their suit, and that occasionally re- 
