Introduction 
15 
that they are song's the birds know well, or that they are con- 
scions of the intervals. I have heard a warbler deliberately 
sing a phiase first with an interval of a semitone, then a 
quarter tone; the bird sings with discrimination. The songs 
recorded are but a very small proportion of those that have 
been heard; many that have charmed me have been utterly 
beyond me;—a practised musician could catch many that have 
eluded me. A great many I have not even attempted to record, 
so intent have I been in the enjoyment of mere listening. 
There is much of interest in a recent book by Dr. Walter 
Gars tang. It is usual, says he, (GS, p. 25) “to regard the 
songs of birds as essentially love-lyrics. With Warde Fowler, 
I doubt this. Love is only one of the emotions which stir a 
bird in the spring; and whether he be a good singer or a poor 
one, he never seems to lack a mate.” Again (p. 36), “The bird 
is a minstrel, not a musician. But now here, now there, among 
the wandering troupes, a musical advance is made. We mark 
a distinctive flair about this latest troubadour, and we catch 
ourselves paying less attention to his words than to his melody. 
Indeed he pronounces his syllables so indistinctly that we can 
barely recognize them, while he resolves a chord upon his lyre 
which makes us throb. What is it? Ilis comrades had 
charmed us with verbal wizardry, but he has given us a fore¬ 
taste of pure music. ... In short, music—the play of tone- 
sequences pure and simple—has emerged from song among birds 
as among mankind. . . . Not until song had built up the 
di- or tri-svllabic phrase, and by repetition of this at successive 
musical levels, or by union of different short phrases, con- 
stiucted the flowing compound phrase, did bird-music reach 
the level of elementary 7 human music; and these were aesthetic, 
not mechanical, achievements.” 
Many of the New Zealand bird-songs may be vocalized; 
that is, the bird appears to say things; but more are pure loops 
of exquisite sound, hung for a few charmed moments in 
shadowy recesses; and when a bird in a Beethoven rapture sits 
quietly singing a perfect theme with variations, from the 
minstrel we hear the musician emerging. 
