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Parallel Growth of Bird and Human 
Music 
BY HENRY W. OLDYS 
Biological Survey, United States Department of Agriculture 
B IRD music presents a fascinating 
field for exploration. What seems 
to the careless glance only a mass 
of unrelated tones becomes under the 
more intense gaze of the student a co¬ 
herent and systematic structure. The 
gradual development from simple cries 
and ejaculations of the remote past to the 
elaborate combinations of different notes 
that the present offers to the ear has not 
moved in a chance direction, but has 
been under the guidance of a law that 
apparently shapes its course towards a 
fixed ideal. 
Such general laws are never perfectly 
uniform in their operation, or we should 
miss that variety which makes nature so 
attractive. Hence it is not surprising 
that we find in some quarters develop¬ 
ment of mere vocalism paramount. 
Birds often have beautiful voices and 
great skill in using them whose songs 
show little appreciation of musical form. 
The mocking-bird and canary are strik¬ 
ing examples of this class. On the other 
hand, many birds, such as the wood- 
thrush and chewink, with perhaps small¬ 
er compass and less brilliant execution, 
must be ranked higher when judged by 
the composition of their songs. 
It will doubtless occur to the critical 
reader that it is incorrect to judge bird 
music by the standard by which human 
music is tested. The student of the 
philosophy of music, in particular, will 
feel satisfied that from the apparently for¬ 
tuitous manner in which we have acquired 
our present musical standard the develop¬ 
ment of bird music must necessarily be 
moving in another direction and along 
different lines. But however cogent the 
grounds for this belief may seem, in¬ 
vestigation shows that there is striking 
evidence that the evolution of bird music \ 
has 'paralleled the evolution of human 
music, and that both are tending toward 
the same ideal. 
The history of human melody dis¬ 
closes that the pleasing features of songs 
which appeal to the aesthetic taste of 
civilized man have been gradual accre¬ 
tions during the progress of music from 
its starting-point. Rhythm, or the met¬ 
rical division of musical utterances; 
tones of fixed pitch, which, passing 
through various stages, have become 
limited to those that constitute our pres¬ 
ent scale — seven in the diatonic and 
twelve in the chromatic; the sense of 
modern tonality—the constant mental J 
reference throughout a melody to a^ 
tonic, or key-note,—all these have de¬ 
veloped at different stages of progress. 
Other aesthetic rules have also become es¬ 
tablished, prominent among which is that 
of repetition. Repetition of single notes, 
of single phrases (on the same or a 
different pitch), and of combinations 
of phrases, all have their pleasurable 
effect. 
Now if we find many of these features 
characterizing bird music, or any part of 
it, remembering that the modern com-^| 
plex structure of bird songs has grown" 
from a very simple beginning, and that 
this evolution is unquestionably inde¬ 
pendent of our own, we shall have good 
reason to believe that the development 
of bird music has been along lines sim¬ 
ilar to those on which human music has 
developed. If it can be shown that various 
species of birds use the intervals of our 
modern scale, and utter their notes in such 
sequence as to produce melodies that are 
pleasing to our ears (which test them by"* 
the rules by which human melodies ar& 
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