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ENGLISH AND AMERICAN SONG-BIRDS. 
THE charm of the songs of birds, like that 
of a nation’s popular airs and hymns, is so 
little a question of intrinsic musical excel- 
lence and so largely a matter of association 
and suggestion, or of subjective coloring 
and reminiscence, that it is perhaps entirely 
natural for every people to think their own 
feathered songsters the best. What music 
would there not be to the homesick Ameri- 
can, in Europe, in the. simple »nd_plain- 
tive note of our bluebird, c«~’ = dity of 
our song-sparrow, or the honest -a.ol of our 
robin; and what to. the Pedocas traveler in 
this country, in #ie_burst of the blackcap, or 
the red-breast, or’ the whistle of the merlin! 
The relative merit of bird-songs can hardly 
be settled dogmatically ; I suspect there is 
very little of what we call music, or of what 
could be noted on the musical scale, in even 
the best of them; they are parts of nature, 
and their power is in the degree in which they 
speak to our experience. 
When the Duke of Argyll, who is a lover 
of the birds and a good ornithologist, was 
in this country, he got the impression that our 
song-birds were inferior to the British, and he 
refers to others of his countrymen as of like 
opinion. No wonder he thought our robin 
inferior in power to the missal thrush, in variety 
to the mavis, and in melody to the blackbird. 
Robin did not and could not sing to his 
ears the song he sings to ours. Then it is 
very likely true that his Grace did not hear 
the robin in the most opportune moment and 
season, or when the contrast of his song 
with the general silence and desolation of 
nature is the most striking and impressive. 
The nightingale needs to be heard at night, 
the lark at dawn rising to meet the sun; and 
robin, if you would know the magic of his 
voice, should be heard in early spring, when, 
as the sun is setting, he carols steadily for 
ten or fifteen minutes, from the top of some 
near tree. There is perhaps no other sound 
in nature; patches of snow linger here and 
there; the trees are naked and the earth is 
cold and dead, and this contented, hopeful, 
re-assuring, and withal musical strain, poured 
out so freely and deliberately, fills the void 
with the very breath and presence of the 
spring. It isa simple strain, well suited to the 
early season; there are no imtricacies in it, 
but its honest cheer and directness, with its 
slight plaintive tinge, like that of the sun 
ze v 
gilding the tree-tops, go straight to the heart. 
‘The compass and variety of the robin’s powers 
are not to be despised either. A German 
who has great skill in the musical education 
of birds told me what I was surprised to hear, 
namely, that our robin surpasses the European 
blackbird in capabilities of voice. 
The Drkeyioes not mention by name all the 
birds he neard while in this country. He was 
evidently influenced in his opinion of them by 
the fact that our common sandpiper ( Zo/anus 
macularius) appeared to be a silent bird, 
whereas its British cousin, the sandpiper of the 
lakes and streams of the Scottish Highlands, is 
very loquacious, and the “male bird has a con- 
tinuous and most lively song.” Either the Duke 
must have seen our bird in one of its silent 
and meditative moods, or else in the wilds 
of Canada, where his Grace speaks of having 
seen it, the sandpiper is a more taciturn bird 
than it is in the States. True, its call-notes 
are not incessant, and it is not properly a song- 
bird any more than the British species is, but 
it has a very pretty and pleasing note as it 
flits up and down our summer streams, or 
runs along on their gray, pebbly, and bowlder- 
strewn shallows. I often hear its calling and 
piping at night during its spring migratings. 
Indeed, we have no silent bird that I am 
aware of, though our pretty cedar-bird has, 
perhaps, the least voice of all. A lady writes 
me that she has heard the humming-bird sing, 
and says she is not to be put down, even if I 
were to prove by the anatomy of the bird’s 
vocal organs that a song was impossible to it. 
Argyll says that though he was in the woods 
and fields of Canada and of the States in the 
richest moment of the spring, he heard little 
of that burst of song which in England comes 
from the blackcap, and the garden warbler, 
and the white-throat, and the reed warbler, 
and the common wren, and (locally) from the 
nightingale. There is no lack of a burst of 
song in this country (except in the remote 
forest solitudes) during the nchest moment 
of the spring, say from the rst to the 2oth of 
May, and at times till near midsummer; more- 
over, more bird-voices join in it, as I shall point 
out, than in Britain; but it is probably more 
fitful and intermittent, more confined to cer- 
tain hours of the day, and probably proceeds 
from throats less loud and vivacious than that 
with which our distinguished critic was fa- 
miliar. The ear hears best and easiest what 
