155 
The Honey-eaters : The Bell-bird 
half filled with a pash of dead and decaying leaves. But the 
forbidden land gave promise to be one of beauty; for above the 
cliff hung clustered green ferns, the tree-foliage was dense and 
varied, all looking fresh and inviting. Occasional butterflies 
settled on the nettles at the entrance; thousands of plumed 
grassheads, and silver toetoe waved on the sunny flat between 
the entrance and the sea, whose rumbling on the stone-strewn 
shore sounded, in the vale, like the moaning of Coccytus. The 
land above was one of beauty: I entered it some days later 
by a circuitous route over the higher ridges. 
It may be that to the various songs and notes heard is im¬ 
parted to the hearer some of the characteristics of the surround¬ 
ings where they are heard, whence the strangeness with which 
the regular beating, the unusual tempo, the peculiar sound, of 
the notes in (14) affected me. On the other hand, it may be 
Q w ■] 
• • 
s 
— 
It- 
A 
i _ M -—< 
0 — 4 
. 
15 
fk— 
— 16 
— ™ — 
• 
tnr - 
J ~ — 
vP 
2 
^ 3 3— 
tiu % 
k< 
lhk KahU 
that the surroundings affect the character of the song. This is 
possibly imputing to the bird an aesthetic sense of a similar 
nature to the one experienced by man himself: nor does there 
seem to be much unnaturalness in such an imputation. The 
bower-building bird of Australia, the dancing birds of La Plata, 
display a human love of decoration and rhythmical motion. The 
bird of paradise, the Argus pheasant, the peacock, betray as 
human a love for the beauty and disposition of colour. The 
aesthetic sense, indeed, appears to be wider in range than is 
usually allowed; it is natural, and its end in birds and men, be 
it for use or gratification, is largely the same. 
There are single notes uttered by the bell-bird that are remark¬ 
able in quality; notes making a much deeper appeal than the 
varied combinations of the ordinary call. Snch a single note 
was (15), heard in 1912 at Stony Bay. It was one of the tiu 
vocalizations, and a bird would often sit in a tree repeating the 
single notes at intervals of about three seconds. It was a short, 
