SYLVAN SECRETS/
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Be BIRD-SONGS AND BOOKS.

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BY

MAURICE THOMPSON.

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AUTHOR OF

* BY-WAYS AND BIRD-NOTES,” ‘‘SONGS OF FAIR
WEATHER,” “‘THE WITCHERY OF
ARCHERY,” ETC.

SNITHSONTT
JUL 22 1987
LIBRARIES

NEW YORK:
JOHN B. ALDEN, PUBLISHER.
i887,

Copyright, 1887,
BY
THE PROVIDENT BOOK CO.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

Preface, -

Mind, Memory, and Migration of Birds,

Beside the Gulf with Ruskin,

Ceryle Alcyon, -

Swamp Sketches,

In the Matter of Shakespeare,
The Motif of Bird-Song,

The Genesis of Bird-Song,

The Anatomy of Bird-Song,

Some Hyoid Hints,

PREFACE.

Tus little book is made up after the fashion
of Nature’s concretions. The parts seemed to
have a sort of affinity for one another, with-
out, in some instances, any discoverable kin-
ship. A sheaf of essays (most of them written
in the woods of the South) I offer to the reader
just as it was bundled together after appear-
ing at intervals and in separate wisps in the
Atlantic, Scribner’s, the Library, and other
magazines.

From my earliest boyhood to the present
hour, I have felt a constant and increasing
pleasure in chasing sylvan secrets through
sunlight and shadow, by river and brook, on
mountain and in valley, all the way back and
forth from the lakes of the North to the great
Southern gulf. Many of these secrets I have
caught, as in a net, a lot of rustling, chirrup-
ing, melodious things, like singing birds, or
prismatic, glowing, odorous, flower-like vis-
ions robbing me of the power of expression,
and yet ever demanding description. I have
felt no other limitation quite so galling as the
inadequacy of my insight. I can see almost
to the nucleus of things—I can nearly make
out this or that perfect form—I almost know
what the serpent thinks, what the dove de-
sires, what the mocking-bird sings ; but the
dainty film is always interposed, just at the
moment of triumph, to shut out the perfect
conclusion and to leave a haunting half-

5

6 PREFACE.

knowledge in its place. It has cheered and
comforted me not a little to find such men as
Huxley and Darwinand Alfred Wallace turn-
ing disconsolately away from the same little
difficult nebule that have worried my weaker
eyes.

Possibly I am the only person in the world
who ever fancied that the highest form of
poetry may lurk in the problems of compara-
tive anatomy and physiology. Be this as it
may, behind the hints and correlations and
suggestions of dry bones and dessicated fossils
there appears to me anepic of awful glory
and power and significance. Whataromance
is geology! What a melodrama is life from
its lowest to its highest forms! We are apt
to look upon Darwin asa realist; but when
we read him well he is a poet like Milton, a
dreamer like Pythagoras, a prophet like
Daniel, a dramatist like Shakespeare.

The more I have studied Nature, the more I
have become aware of God. When lapproach
the beginning I find Him, and His hand puts
me gently but firmly away, asiftosay: ‘‘I
stand here all alone.” When I approach the
end, there too is God standing all alone, self-
existent, sufficient, unimaginable, at once the
cause and the culmination, the germ, the
bloom, and the fruit of all things. I do not
expect that men ever will find the secret of
life locked in acell or in any other minute
division of matter. No analysis of the spe-
cialist, no synthesis of the generalizer can ever
pass beyond the vail. God said: ‘‘ Let life
be,” and life was. Still I believe in evolution;
I feel it, I see it; but it is evolution by God’s
law, bounded by His limiting purpose. When
we study Nature we study Him, not in the
materialistic or pantheistic sense, but in the

PREFACE. ¥

Christian sense. The will of the universe is
€od’s will, because God made the universe, as
he made man, and blew into it the energy
that fills it. I seeno clash between Christian-
ity and Science. Geology tells me the same
story that Moses and the prophets tell me;
the birds sing it, the flowers hint it, the winds
murmur it, the aspirations of my soul are
founded in it.

The following essays, however, are not es-
pecially devoted to evolution. Indeed some
of them are not Nature-studies at all. The
one on Shakespeare when it first appeared
called down upon me the tremendous hand of
a great scholar, and I was cuffed until my
ears rang merrily; but I did not wince, and I
would walk five miles to-day to clasp that
hand. If some over-earnest follower of Hux-
ley, Parker, and Macgillivray shall consider it
worth while to show clearly that my conclu-
sions in ‘‘ Hyoid Hints” and the ‘‘ Anatomy
of Bird-song” are erroneous, let him proceed ;
but until he do this, I shall believe in my de-
monstrations with perfect complacency.

After all, the title, ‘‘ Sylvan Secrets,” under
which this booklet goes forth, does not neces-
sarily signify that the Secrets are explained ;
they may be merely catalogued as precious
mysteries, valuable for the very qualities
which render them insoluble. Perhaps there
may be critics who will imagine that the most
obvious secret of all is the motif of my work,
and [am quite charitable enough to sympa-
thize with the practical spirit of such, al-
though I certainly must have had a purpose
other than the mere pleasure of writing. I
saw, felt, heard, tasted, dreamed, and fancied,
and the substance of all was what I tried to
put into words. What is stated as fact must

8 PREFACE.

be taken as fact, what is offered as conjecture
or inference must be weighed as such, an@
what appears to be the overflow of a cheerful
and optimistic fancy may be done by as the
reader please.

As for me, when I turn these leaves I hear
the rustle of wild foliage and wilder wings,
the songs of many birds, the bubbling of in-
numerable brooks, the wash of surf, and the
tumbling of white-caps. Can the reader hear
these by the same means? If he can, my
writing has not been done without a touch of
genius.

Who reads Nature without the side-light of
many books? How shall one keep the art
of literature out of one’s interviews with
things in the wilderness? If I hear a thrush
or a mocking-bird sing, how shall I hinder
the coming of the Persian and Provengal
and old English poets with their rhymes
about the Nightingale? Before I know it
Iam assuming the attitude of a singer, and
am posing in Nature’s face. How shall I be
dumb while the very stars are eloquent ?
Here is Theocritus and here is Keats singing
away, aS young and happy as ever; why
‘shall I not attitudinize in my day and way ?

‘*But these essays are incongruous,” sug-
gests the critic. Well, then, they are incongru-
ous; but what of it? Nature is incongruous,
nay more, it is contradictory, as are certain
of my essays. Atone time my observations of
facts clearly prove one thing; at another
time they certainly establish just the oppo-
site thing. I am not sure that this is alto-
gether my fault, for Nature is tricksy in her
moods and as whimsical, now and again, as
any pedagogue. She strings her creations
together without rhyme or reason. The

— ee

PREFACE. 9

violet and the stramonium, the ground-cherry
and the night-shade, the clover and the net-
tle, the woodbine and the poison ivy are all
bound in a volume. Man has done all the
classifying, all the distinctive grouping. It
is the botanist, not Nature, who does the as-
sorting, separating and naming. The rain
and the sunshine find the weed as well as
the corn, and touch it as lovingly.

One of the most distinguished of American
scientists chanced to read the paper on the
‘* Anatomy of Bird-song ” while it was in the
manuscript. ‘‘ Nobody will care for this,”
he said. ‘* You will not have twenty readers.
Why, when I was attending Huxley’s lect-
ures in London, he spoke to more empty
benches than to auditors. The truth is, dry
bones are very poor picking at best.”

This was not news to me; but I resented
it all the same, for I see in geology, in compar-
ative anatomy, in paleontology, in geograph-
ical botany, and in comprehensive analysis
of Nature generally, the basis of all human
inspiration, for these include the universe
and man. Divine inspiration comes of God,
and is independent. We must take it without
a question. Our study of man is feeble and
narrow, if we make it all foreground, leav-
ing out the perspective of natural history.
What is the human story comprised between
the oldest monuments and the books of to-
day, if we compare it with the story sug-
gested by the hints of geology ? What is the
romance of the Cid, or the Romance of the
Rose, or the Iliad, beside the romance of the
peat bogs, or of the coal-measures, or even
of the American mounds? There was a
Golden Age of song, there was the idyllic life
of Arcadia; but beyond these there was a

10 PREFACE.

time when tropic flowers and spicy plants
and grasses and odorous fruits grew around
the boreal pale. To me all nature is ro-
mance; even the skull of a bird is the flower
of a long chanson de geste coming up through
a million years of adventure and change
from the fish or the saurian. Every species
of plant or animal has an heroic significance
when I remember what a battle it has fought
for existence. When I am out with the trees
and the winds and the birds and the flowers,
I am consorting with things of ancient ex-
traction whose adventures and experiences
reach back into the farthest mists of perspec-
tive. They have secrets to tell me, but how
shall I know when they are told ?
THE AUTHOR.

SYLVAN SECRETS.

MIND, MEMORY AND MIGRATION OF
BIRDS.

WITHOUT preliminary negotiations, or spe-
cial preparations of any kind, I took posses-
sion of an old building which once had been a
‘‘gin-house.” Now bear in mind that I do
not mean gin-mill when I write gin-house,
for the words are far from synonymous. My
new abode was picturesquely dilapidated and
stood in the midst of a dense growth of young
_ pine trees. From a window I had a view,
through a rift in the foliage, of a small blue
lake and a wide stretch of green, rush-cov-
ered marsh. An ancient peach and pear
orchard was close at hand, the venerable old
neglected trees standing knee-deep in a mass
of scrubby scions.

This gin-house, instead of having once been
a place where intoxicating drinks were con-
cocted and sold, was simply the wreck of an
old plantation cotton-ginning establishment ;
indeed here was an abandoned and over-
grown estate which formerly had been the
pride of a Southern planter of great wealth
and social and political power. The stately
mansion had disappeared, saving the frag-
ments and ruins of some stuccoed brick col-
umns and the amorphous heaps of rubbish
suggestive of chimneys and foundation pil-

did)

a2 SYLVAN SECRETS.

lars; nor was there much left to remind one
of the agricultural wealth, formerly the
largest of this broad area now given over to
a thrifty growth of strong young trees and to
a wild, musical mob of birds. A considerable
marsh, once drained by a rude wind-mill and
cultivated in sea-island cotton, had been re-
claimed by the tide-water (which now crept
in rhythmically through many breaks in the
little dyke) and had become a home of the
herons and bitterns. Remnants, more pa-
thetic than picturesque, of the tall shaft and
pumping apparatus belonging to the mill lay
in a mouldering and rusting heap beside the
water.

My gin-house was a poor shelter if it should
rain, but I could supplement it with my
waterproof blanket; and then the climate
was very kind at worst. How, indeed, could
a climate be more tender in its concessions to
one’s preferences? A breezc from the gulf,
salty and exhilarating, or a waft from the
pine-woods, fragrantly heavy with terebinth
and balm, was blowing day and night, and
the medley of bird songs was accompanied
with the effective counterpoint of the distant
sea-moan. There was romance in the atmos-
pheric perspective on both water and land as
well as in the story suggested by the ruins all
around me, and a few of my readers will
readily recall from experience of their own
how sweet an auxiliary to realistic study is
this influence of romance. Science, through
which realism works its only wonders (for
realism in fiction is a fraudulent pretence),
science, I say, is itself most charming when
its light flickers on the filmy and misty verge
of Nature’s romance, and your genuine lover
of science is far from averse to making his
dryest studies under circumstances of the

MIND AND MEMORY OF BIRDS. 13

most picturesque sort. Ido not claim that I
chose my old cotton-gin house on account of
its poetical suggestiveness; this quality was
simply a great charm added to a spot pos-
sessed of many practical advantages in aid of
my purpose, which was a peculiar line of
bird-study.

On one side a fresh-water lakelet, on the
other side the Gulf of Mexico—great marsh
meadows and reaches of sand-bar—dense for-
ests, thickets, old fields given over to Nature,
orchards left to the will of the mocking-birds
and their friends and foes—everything, in-
deed, to favor my quest was in view, with
the romance and the beauty thrown in for
good measure. So, swinging my hammock
from the heavy beams of the gin-house loft,
and leaving the care of the mule and the
spring-wagon to my hired free man of color,
who was to be my factotum, I abandoned
myself to the study in hand, feeling that for
once many elements had joined themselves
together to enhance my physical and spirit-
ual comfort. Here on the latest fringe of
Nature’s geological formation, with all the
newest discoveries of natural science at hand
in the shape of books and memoranda, and
with fishes, birds, reptiles and mammals,
water of sea, stream and lake, woods,
marshes and swamps, with all the range of
plants growing in them, what more could I
wish ?

It was comforting to realize what a differ-
ence there must be between life now and life
some million or more years ago; for there has
been a period in the past when I should have
had to be content with sitting upon some
bleak, sandy cretaceous shore and studying

14 SYLVAN SECRTES.

those mockeries of birds with which Nature
was fond of experimenting in her infancy.
Professor Marsh has carefully studied, de-
scribed and figured the remains of an ancient
bird which he has named Hesperornis re-
galis; and which in shape and habits re-
sembled a loon. He makes a striking com-
parison between the brain cavity of the
ancient and that of the modern bird, and
draws the inference that, as in the case of
mammals and reptiles there has been a steady
increase of intelligence in the avian animal
from the most remote period of its existence
down to the present time. Here is a sugges-
tion arising from the fact of this constant
brain-development: may not brain-improve-
ment, which is another phrase for intelligence-
development, account in a large degree for
the gradual self-modifying of species to suit
the environment ? Darwin’s law of the sur-
vival of the fittest pre-supposes simply the
fittest physically; but the film of vague intel-
ligence primarily planted in the animal no
doubt gave the impulse toward the proper
habitat and also that initial elasticity, which
has became so powerful, rendering self-modi-
fication to suit changes in surroundings not
only possible but comparatively easy.
Probably, when all manner of life was
largely elementary and weak, the conditions
of change were almost infinitely mild and all
the movements of Nature slow and gentle.
In those times little intelligence was needed
to enable the fittest to survive. It may be
assumed that brain and nerve-centres in-
creased in size and strength as necessity com-
pelled an increase of nervous exercise; but
such an assumption compasses a great deal
not directly expressed by the phrasing of it,

MIND AND MEMORY OF BIRDS. 15

for the influence of the mind upon the body,
even in the case of a low animal, is great and
manifold. Indeed, I believe that the whole
matter of physical modification in animals
brought about by the exigencies of change in
environment, is referable, in an obscure and
indirect way, to that influence. What we
attempt to express by the word desire is
nothing more than a natural (though it may
be a sadly debased) impulse toward another
state. Inits broadest and freest sense desire
is merely the initial effort of a being toward
a new experience or a lost estate; in other
words, it is the consciousness of a need
coupled with an impulse in the direction ob-
taining it. The mind-cure fraud is based
upon the efficacy of desire. The concentra-
tion of the mind upon any particular part of
the body certainly affects the part, and the
effect may be to produce local disturbance of
a peculiar kind, or to destroy a result of local
lesion, provided the lesion be not more than
a disturbance of nervous equilibrium. From
the point of view thus taken one may see
one’s way clear to an inference as simple as it
is strong: evolution is the outcome of natu-
ral desire, and natural desire has been gener-
ated by a disturbance of natural equilibrium.
There is nothing abstruse or occult in this
proposition; it is merely a recognition of the
development of ‘intelligence and of the con-
trolling power of the brain in animals.
Professor Marsh, in the course of his ad-
mirable monograph on the Odontornithes,
or ancient toothed birds, suggests that cer-
tain wingless species had become so by non-
uwer of the organs of flight, Perhaps the
limit of this proposition would be found coin-
ciding with that of brain-influence above

16 SYLVAN SECRETS.

enunciated. The neglect of an organ implies
that the organ is not needed, and that there-
fore it is not desired. On the other hand, if
the need for an organ increase, the desire for
it will strengthen apace, and the organ will
be modified in accordance with this natural
desire. The trouble about fully comprehend-
ing this law lies in our proneness to confining
our idea of its operation within the space ot
a few years, as compared with the almost
immeasurable ages of geologic time through-
out which the law has operated with the
effects we now observe. If we can force our
minds to consider a million years, for in-
stance, as the minimum space of time requi-
site to effect the elimination of a useless organ
by the operation of natural desire, transmit-
ted by heredity, we shall begin to feel the
perfect reasonableness of our proposition.

Going a step farther, I think there is much
evidénce tending to prove that birds are en-
dowed with what may be called hereditary
memory and hereditary desire. It seems that
if ever man possessed this hereditament he
has lost it in the over-development of his
higher mental powers.

I have noted the following facts:

A bird, when reared in captivity and far
from any of its kind, will utter exactly the
notes of its ancestors. It will also build a nest
after the fashion prescribed by ancestral hab-
it. It will feed its young in accordance with
hereditary custom. It will migrate, or not,
as ancestral influence directs. It will capture
its food after the style and by the same means
established in its tribe by immemorial usage.
It will seek the habitat always haunted by its
kind.

I knew a boy who took a pair of unfledged

MIND AND MEMORY OF BIRDS. 17

woodpeckers from the parental nest and
reared them by hand. He kept them ina
cage nearly a year, and then freed them.
They lingered about the premises and soon
pecked a hole ina dead pear tree, after the
true picus pattern, and therein reared a
brood. Nest-architecture evidently was her-
editary with them.

I have heard a mocking-bird, reared in
captivity and alone ina Northern state, utter,
with absolute precision, the characteristic cry
of a Southern bird whose voice it never had
heard in its life.

It will be evident to every close observer
that the habit of living in a cage is becoming
hereditary with the canary bird.

Domestic fowls are losing, by an infinitesi-
mal process, their wing-power. The need for
flight is diminishing and with it the natural
desire for wings. The body and legs and
brain of these birds are rapidly increasing in

eight and strength. On the other hand, our
domestic fowls have largely lost their ances-
tral traits—hereditary memory with them is
beginning to go no farther back than to the
limit of this domestic state of existence.

I witnessed a striking incident in bird life
which was very suggestive: a wild goose, by
some accident separated from its flock on the
spring flight northward, circled low in the
air uttering now and again its loud cry. A
domestic gander preening himself beside a
meadow brook, heard the clanging voice and
lifting his head answered it with emphasis.
I could not help wondering if an almost irre-
sistible wave of memory had indeed been
started in the brain of the domestic bird by
this low-flying migrant. Dimly, perhaps, but
wildly, 2 ee. came in the old hereditary

18 SYLVAN SECRETS.

desire for the far northern water-brinks,
along with an elusive and tantalizing recol-
lection of a time, thousands of years ago,
when he, in the body of a remote forebear, or
clamorous male ancestor, voyaged the high
thin air in one of those triangular flocks
sketched on the violet sky of spring, or on
the gray-blue heaven of autumn.

I have seen a flock of domestic geese, in
early spring or late autumn, rise suddenly
and fly around in the air, uttering wild
cries and exhibiting every sign of ecstatic im-
pulse, for which there appeared no sufficient
cause in their surroundings or condition. I
have not a doubt that this is an almost in-
voluntary movement toward migration gen-
erated by a feeble return of the old hereditary
natural desire.

The foregoing facts and instances, to which
might be added many more of a like charac-
ter, all tend to prove that birds possess some-
thing like hereditary memory. On the other
hand a few facts may be cited tending to es-
tablish the proposition that wild birds are
modifying themselves in response to the exi-
gencies arising out of recent changes in their
surroundings.

The red-headed woodpecker is rapidly be-
coming an expert fly-catcher, a pursuit for
which his physique does not especially fit
him, and he is already a grain and fruit-eat-
ing bird, although his bill and tongue are
made for extracting insects from rotten wood.

Chimney swallows have almost quite aban-
doned hollow trees for their nesting-places,
even in our most thickly wooded areas, pre-
ferring our chimneys.

The high-hole, or flicker, has become almost
entirely a ground bird in its feeding habit,

MIND AND MEMORY OF BIRDS. 19

and is modifying its bill from the ancestral
wedge shape of the woodpecker’s beak, to
that of the slender, curved mandibles belong-
ing to the thrushes and the meadow-lark.

The house-wren rarely builds its nest in the
crevices of cliffs or in the hollows of logs and
trees, as it once did. It seeks the habitations
of man and is modifying its nest architccture
to suit the new situation.

The sap-sucker (yellow-bellied woodpecker)
is losing the power to protrude its tongue far
beyond the end of its bill, a very striking
modification going on apace with its depart-
ure from the true woodpecker habit of feed-
ing. Some of the woodpecker species, the
hairy woodpecker, for instance, can thrust
forward the tongue more than two inches
beyond the point of the bill, while the sap-
sucker can reach scarcely one-third of an
inch.

In the case of wading birds, those species
which have chosen to live near small streams
have shorter legs and neck than species
which prefer larger streams, lakes or sea-
borders, and, taking the little green heron as
an example, as our streams diminish in vol-
ume year by year, the bird modifies its habit
in accordance with necessity, and in my
mind there is no doubt that its legs and neck
will be affected, in the course of a compara-
tively short period, to a noticeable degree.

The blue-jay is either a corvine croaker
passing into the song-bird’s estate, or a song-
bird whose natural desire for singing is fading
away, leaving it to relapse into the crow’s
unmusical condition; for its voice has a strain
of genuine melody in it mixed up, almost
comically, with the harsh discords of the true
crow-caw,

20 SYLVAN SECRETS.

It would seem that this power of self-modi-
fication serves the bird in the same way that
the inventive and constructive faculties serve
man. The instance of the soundless flight of
night-birds of prey is a striking one. A
hawk in swooping down upon a quail at mid-
day makes a loud roaring with its wings,
while an ow] falling by night upon its quarry
is as silent as ‘‘snow on wool.” The stillness
of night has operated for countless ages to
create a natural desire in owls for the power
to strike their prey in utter silence, and the
desire, transmitted by heredity, has finally
so modified the bird’s wings and plumage as
to respond perfectly to the persistent thought.

Birds of the polar areas of snow and ice
are white, those of the tropics are vari-colored
and brilliant-hued. The condition in each
instance has been reached through a natural
desire to hide by blending with the prevailing.
tone of Nature. Thus the quail and the par-
tridge, the meadow-lark and the flicker, the ~
snipes, the woodcock, the prairie grouse and,
in fact, nearly all the ground-feeding birds,
resemble one another in general color or plu-
mage-tone, simply because their environment
has induced parallelism of natural desire—
the desire to blend with the prevailing brown
tinge of their feeding-places as the most
effective protection against the sharp eyes of
their enemies. Some of the game-birds have
even acquired the power to withhold their
scent from foxes and wolves, and from the
sportsman’s dog as well. There is a good
reason why this desire to perfectly disappear,
so to speak, in the color of the environment,
has been more persistent and successful in
the case of game-birds than in that of any
other. On account of the sweetness of its

MIND AND MEMORY OF BIRDS. 21

flesh the game-bird has a host of greedy and
ever-watchful enemies, and therefore its life
has been an intensely tragic experience from
its beginning down to the present time.

The aquatic birds, viewed in the light of
paleontology, have changed less than any
others in their structure and habit; this be-
cause their habitat and their methods of feed-
ing have remained constant in a general way.
From the IJchthyornis and Aptornis of the
cretaceous shores and seas down to the terns
of the present time, the seas have been the
feeding places and the homes of this sort of
birds, and the food has changed little in its
character. Probably the marine fish-eating
birds are all of very ancient origin, and have
developed very slowly, while the kingfishers
and other fresh-water birds are, compara-
tively, of recent creation, or have been greatly
modified from some ancient form, because
the conditions and resources of fresh-water
bodies have always been less constant than
those of the salt oceans and seas.

While my sojourn at the old gin-house
- lasted I made the herons and shore-birds and
the noisy songsters of the pine wood and live-
oak swamps my boon companions. I was not
in a shooting mood most of the time, prefer-
ring to drift about in my boat, or to walk
stealthily among the wild things, watching
their movements and studying their attitudes
—always with reference to the suggestions
contained in the foregoing notes. It is curi-
ous how one’s imagination helps one under
such circumstances, by lending to every visi-
ble thing that coloring which never was on
sea orland. I soon came to regard my stately
herons and wide-winged pelicans as venerable
birds, probably older than the land upon

22 SYLVAN SECRETS.

which my gin-house stood. Why should a
heron ever die of old age? He has no grief,
no sorrow, no nagging conscience, no indiges-
tion, no tendency towards drunkenness or
other vice. Look at that big ash-blue fellow
yonder, as he stands beside that wisp of tall
marsh-grass, and tell me when and where he
was hatched; may it not have been ten thou-
sand yearsago? Perhaps it was he who shed
the feather, the fine impression of which now
rests somewhere in the lowest stratum of the
quaternary! Brave old fellow! he lived before
the western mountains were lifted out of the
sea, and while yet the upper cretaceous rocks
were sediment held in suspension. He was
too wary to leave his bones beside those of
Hesperornis and Ichthyornis! With his
jewel-like eyes he has seen every step of
man’s development.

But the mocking-bird yonder, how old is
he? How has he survived the great upheav-
als and the great down-sinkings—the floods
and the ebbs? It is not known; but he is
here, nevertheless, as young and fresh and
free as he was when Adam drew the first
breath ofa living soul. What migrations and
re-migrations he has had to make to keep on
land and to follow the shiftings of climate-
centres, during all these geologic oscillations!
The time was, perhaps, when he sang in fruit-
fragrant groves around the North pole; for
that was a warm and luxuriant spot once, as
is shown by the vegetable fossils of the later
rocks. Allthe way from the gulf-coast north-
ward to where the paleozoic deposits dip un-
der the eternal ice and snow of the boreal re-
gion are found traces of a flora which grew
under tropical and, perhaps, even torrid con-
ditions of climate. The age of riant vegeta-

MIND AND MEMORY OF BIRDS. 23

tion and of summer heat was followed by the
gradual coming on of what is called the
glacialage, when vast accumulations of ice, in
the form of glaciers, swept down from the far
north and destroyed all life in America, as far
south at least as the Ohio River valley. Dur-
ing the time this enormous body of ice was
accumulating and moving down in the form
of a glacier, toward the gulf, our birds began
to feel a desire to move away southward be-
fore the chilly invader. This desire was not
born in a day, or a year, or a century; it
slowly grew by hereditary descent and accre-
tion, so to say, operating differently in differ-
ent species. Some birds by infinitesimal de-
grees modified their physiques to conform
somewhat to the exigencies of the climatic
changes; others, following the call of natural
desire, crept away in the direction of warm
sea-currents and genial sunshine until they
were huddled in some lost Atlantis, some
tropical garden of preservation washed by
tepid ocean-streams over which the glacial
rigor could not prevail. Then came another
oscillation of Nature. The tropical region
began to return toward the pole, drawing the
birds along with it, and now here they are
again swarming in to the land out of which
the ice-king drove them hundreds of centuries
ago!

As I swung in my hammock under the
grimy beams of my gin-house, listening to
the mocking-birds’ songs and to the mellow
moan of the sea, I began to analyze and com-
pare all the foregoing facts, and it seemed to
me that I discovered the solution of this mys-
tery of bird migration which has troubled
naturalists so long.

During the countless centuries of the qua-

24 SYLVAN SECRETS.

ternary age there was a series of climatic
oscillations, the tropical temperature swaying
back and forth over a wide area from north
to south. The birds migrated to and fro un.
der the impulse of a natural desire to keep
within an agreeable habitat. These oscilla-
tions of temperature were on a large scale;
but, from the nature of things, there were
intermediate disturbances of a like character,
and of far slighter effect. No doubt the birds
resisted these changes with stubborn persist-
ency, giving way before them only at the
last moment, and returning upon their haunts
with each temporary relaxation of the icy
grip, to be driven away again and again
through a long series of generations. This
struggle for the old northern home, kept up
for ages, became a hereditament of bird-
nature, an instinct, as we call it, a natural
desire, indeed, irresistible and perpetual.
The migratory birds are the old birds of the
north. With them the polar region is a dim
and tender memory transmitted from a re-
mote ancestral source.

The non-migratory species are those birds
whose physiques were long ago so modified
that natural desire for a lost habitat was ex-
tinguished and equilibrium reached.

The aquatic and semi-aquatic birds are
mostly very distant migrators, and yet, ap-
parently, they have the least need to migrate
atall. Why, for instance, should a Florida
gallinule leave the plashy, lily-lined margins
of the southern lakes in spring and go far
north to less eligible waters? Why do so
many wood duck, teal, snipe, herons and
bitterns come out of the South to breed?
The fact that many, very many, of these
birds do not migrate at all is strong proof, I

MIND AND MEMORY OF BIRDS. 25

think, that the hereditary memory is growing
weaker year by year, and that the time may
come when migration will cease. In many
cases the need for migration does not exist,
therefore the desire is merely traditionary, as
it were, and must be fading out. The mock-
ing-bird’s habit is an instance of the imperfect
migratory memory. Why should a few of
this species come as far north as the Ohio
valley to nest when the great body of them
are happy to remain far south? Such a ques-
tion might be asked regarding many other
species. The answer is to be found in trans-
mitted memory and hereditary desire.

BESIDE THE GULF WITH RUSKIN.

Let me sketch a bit of landscape before I
begin to write, a bit with which I have been
so charmed day after day that I have not
looked at anything else. The point of view is
a high swell of sand thinly set with tall, slen-
der pine trees, and our seat is a smooth,
weather-beaten log. Behind us is a dense
forest, stretching away for miles, a forest in
which the blooms and tassels are beginning
to show, albeit it is the second day of Feb-
ruary. Before us, and but 150 yards away,
shines the white beach and pale blue water of
the Gulf of Mexico. There is a sound over-
head, a strange moaning, made by the breeze
in the pine-tops, and the rhythmic sea-boom
seems to flow close to the ground at our feet.
We can see the sky in violet streaks and frag-
ments through the foliage, and we can catch
at times glimpses of stately ships standing far
out along the horizon, apparently motionless,
but in reality bowling along before a good
breeze ‘‘ from lands of snow to lands of sun.”
The temperature of the air is such that we
need no wraps, and yet are not too warm,
and there is a June-like balm felt with every
breath we draw. Here is where my friend
and I come to lounge—to “‘ loaf and invite our
souls.” We have been reading Ruskin, too,
or rather my friend has been reading aloud
to me, while I have lain in a most receptive
mood, watching the ever fresh color-changes
of the landscape. Ruskin describes clouds,

26

WITH RUSKIN. at

but how could he ever find a phrase with
which to picture a gulf-cap, as I see it yonder
in the far south-west, suspended between sea
and sky? The fact is that here on the gulf
coast I find some of the most delightful
weather and many of the most charming bits
of scenery I have ever enjoyed. One could
almost afford to have a sharp attack of in-
flammatory rheumatism in order to get sent
down here (for a month or two of convales-
cence) where one may lie on a log like an alli-
gator and listen to the wind and the sea and
the roaring pines, while an obliging friend
sits buzzing and humming over a volume of
Ruskin like a bee over a flower. Few books
_ will bear reading in the open air, in the full,
strong light of nature. Even Ruskin would
- suffer under the test.

How apparent becomes the utter isolation
of a mind like Ruskin’s when one gets thor-
oughly apart with it and ata great distance
from the clashing activities of worldly lfe!
Kmerson, Carlyle, and Ruskin—three lonely
spirits talking to mankind in the language of
seers and prophets, and all without much re-
sult, so far as effecting their purposes is con-
cerned. This is good mind-food, all this bril-
liant literature, suggestive, thought-provok-
ing, soul-delighting; but the old world and
the new world heed not its philosophy, flinch
not under its goads, adopt not one suggestion
it offers. A few read and are strangely af-
fected; they feel a fertilizing element flung
into their minds, and they wonder why all
the world is not down at Carlyle’s, or Emer-
son’s, or Ruskin’s feet; and yet even these
few do not go much farther than mere recep-
tivity impels. The activities of life are, in-
deed, little influenced by the great abstract

98 SYLVAN SECRETS.

thinkers. This world is a material one, and,
hate materialism as we justly may, it is af-
fected most by material forces. One sees this
more plainly when one is ata distance from
the world, shut up, so to speak, in the heart
of nature, where one may be secure in peep-
ing forth to watch

With an eye serene
The very pulse of the machine,

Hence, reading Ruskin in the open air of the
pine woods, with the blue gulf of Mexico pur-
ring at your feet, is quite different from perus-
ing him in aclosely-curtained and overheated
library. While my friend was reading yes-
terday, in the mellowest tones imaginable,
and while I was watching a steamer trail a
dim line of smoke along the wavering hori-
zon, lo! the first mocking-bird song of the
season came rippling forth from a neighbor-
ing thicket of wax-myrtle bushes. You know
these myrtles bear thick bunches of fragrant,
oily berries, from which the people of this re-
gion formerly made wax for candles used by
Catholics in certain church and funeral for-
malities. We forgot Ruskin in giving our
ears over to this fresh music bubbling from
the well-spring of nature. Think of it, a gen-
uine gush of bird-song on the second day of
February! And such a song, too! bright,
airiose, full of spirit, and yet rich and deep,
almost too melancholy at times, running
through a hundred changes in as many sec-
onds, and filling the whole wood with mel-
ody. It is very unusual for a mocking-bird
to sing so early as this, but the weather has
been superb, and already the violets are bloom-
ing blue and white all through the forests
along this coast. My friend threw aside the

WITH RUSKIN. 39

volume of Ruskin and went slipping away
toward the thicket in a vain attempt to sur-
prise the singer at his song. Here is fame!
The greatest of living art critics is forgotten
in the presence of American song-birds! For
one I am patriotic enough to be proud of the
bird’s superiority. Whateveris good and at
the same time genuinely American, is worth
honoring, if it is nothing but a song of free-
dom sung out of season by a free wild bird.
But the mocking-bird is far more typical of
America than is the eagle, for it is found only
in our country, and then its restless and en-
terprising disposition is the very counterpart
of that which has placed our nation in the
fore-front of progress within so short a period
of time. It is interesting to go back through
the writings of the naturalists and note how
they all have done homage to the mocking-
bird, le moqueur as Buffon called it. Fer-
nandes, Nieremberg, Catesby, Bartram, Wil-
son, Audubon, Nuttall, Baird, and Coues have
built monuments of praise to it, poets have
sung to it, musicians have tried to imitate it,
and everybody has admired it. No wonder
then if its song drove Ruskin from our minds.
The digression was short, however, for, like
every other true genius, the mocking-bird is
not overgenerous with song-giving, and al-
ways quits before he has quite satisfied you.
My reading friend began where he had left
off with a passage like this: “The guilty
thieves of Kurope, the real sources of deadly
war in it, are the capitalists.” From a man
who was born a capitalist and who has never
known the need of a dollar, that is a strange
assertion, but if any rich man has or ever had
the right to make it John Ruskin is he. A
capitalist who gives $50,000 per annum to the

30 SYLVAN SECRETS.

poor is quite entitled to air his opinions touch-
ing the doings of his own tribe of men, and
we are bound to give his opinions consider-
able weight. But when one is in the woods
and as free as the breeze one is apt to smile at
any mere opinion. At this distance men ap-
pear to be divided into two classes,—viz.: cap-
italists and those who would very much like
to be capitalists. The capitalists are glad
they are capitalists, and the others are angry
because they are not capitalists. I say that
thus it looks toa free man far down in the
Southern woods, no matter what Ruskin or
the anarchists may say. It is curious to note
how surely every argument against the nat-
ural processes of human intercourse and gov-
ernment tends toward anarchy. Worldly
wisdom long ago constructed, by a process
of crystallization, the only true economy—
namely, that controlled by the principle of
make and keep. The laborer is worthy of his
hire and he must have it, but he must save
a part of it if he would become independent.
This is all that can be said from now till
doomsday. The laborer is the only free man.
So soon as he ceases to be a laborer he is no
longer free, and so the danger to organized
laborers bound in a body is the loss of per-
sonal liberty in the loss of the right to labor
at will.

But we must not let Ruskin lead us into the
labor question; for how can we think clearly
on such a subject here in this dim wood, with
the lazy, balmy breeze fanning us, and the
gulf waves murmuring at our feet? Give us
a vision of the stones of Venice, O large-
hearted but impractical Ruskin! or lead us
over to Rome, or to Verona in a trance, but
do not mention political or domestic economy

WITH RUSKIN. 31

again, for we are idlers and health-hunters,
lounging along the gulf shore and reading for
pleasure, not for profit.

Indeed, one must read for pleasure when
one would thoroughly enjoy Ruskin, and then
what a charming outdoor companion he is.
His theories and quirks and carpings all dis-
appear in his brilliant phrasing and musical
cadences. Color, color, color, harmony, finely-
sketched outlines, impressions set against the
most witching backgrounds, and above alla
rare sincerity ever present, and saturating
the whole like the juice in ripe fruit, or like
the sunshine in summer air. One must mix
one’s figures in attempting to characterize
Ruskin’s style, for it is as changeable and
curious as the inside of a kaleidoscope. He
sees things from an isolated and exceptional
point of view, but he is never purposely ec-
centric or odd in his ways of expression. He
is original, and, more, he is always strikingly
picturesque, so that when you read his works
in the open air, or hear them read there, it is
almost as if his figures and thoughts stood out
upon the landscape against the sky or the sea,
for above all he is an artist of the best sort
and harmonizes his creations with the great
scheme of nature. He believes that he isa
realist of the pre-Raphaelite kind, but he is,
nevertheless, a romancer, a thorough-going
idealist, always glorifying and beautifying
something common and vulgar till it shines
like a sunlit cloud. Indeed, even nature is
not a realist of the analytical, microscopic
sort in her best work, for she is not content
with showing things just as they are, but
must hang a luminous atmosphere about them
and touch them with heavenly colors. She
knows the blue enchantment of distance, the

32 SYLVAN SECRETS.

value of romantic suggestions, the power of
dim lines and mysterious shadows. She
sketches here, she indicates an effect yonder,
at one moment finishing the minutest details,
at another dashing a formless wonder on sky,
or sea, or mountain side, but she never stops
work to analyze motives or to call attention
to her methods.

‘Not with the skill of an hour, nor of a
life,” reads my friend, ‘‘ nor of a century, but
with the help of numberless souls, a beautiful
thing must be done.” Ah, Mr. Ruskin, you
are right. By such a plan all creation has
been wrought. Nature knows it. With the
help of numberless energies the seed germi-
nates, the plant grows, the leaves leap forth,
and the flower flashes like a sun. What eons
of years it has taken to build a rose up from
the almost formless plant sketch set in the
ancient rocks! Whataslow process has been
the building of the present man up from the
man of the cave and the peat-bog! Nature is
never in a hurry save when in a destructive
mood. She broods over her working plans
and saturates her materials with life from a
myriad sources before her dream begins to
take materialform. Ruskin disputes himself,
however, and repudiates this doctrine pres-
ently, for he affects to despise the practical
part of paleontology and archeology, and to
laugh at the scientists in general. Perhaps
he is in accord with nature here, too, for she
disputes herself and denies her acts, whenever
it can serve her turn, to say nothing of the
way she snubs the scientists. ‘‘ Does not Mr.
Darwin show you that you can’t wash the
slugs out of a lettuce without disrespect to
your ancestors?” reads my friend, and I see
a smile of deep satisfaction on his refined

WITH RUSKIN. 33

face, for he cannot endure evolution. But it
occurs to me that the choice between a slug
on one hand and a hideous cannibal on the
other gives one no great esthetic latitude in
selecting a forefather. It is not what we
have risen from that should make us blush,
but what we are now. Our progeny, not our
ancestors, should make us glad or sad. All
the more honor to the man if indeed he has
come up from the germ in the old dust of
chaos, has wriggled past the worms, swam
past the fishes, outstripped the birds, and
made himself the lord, of all the animals. In-
deed, as I sit here in this tropical springtide,
with my eyes full of color-visions and my
ears full of soothing sounds, Iam willing to
consider myself a manifestation of nature’s
patient work, the end of a labor begun when
life first stirred in the most favored spot of
the earth.

_ The trouble with Ruskin is that he has come
to look upon art as the whole of life. He
' would make the world a great studio-—he
would change human passion into a figure to
be drawn on canvas and cut inmarble. Hear
my friend read again:

‘‘Do you fancy a Greek workman ever
made a vase by measurement? He dashed it
from his hand on the wheel, and it was beau-
tiful; and a Venetian glass-blower swept you
a curve of crystal from the end of his pipe;
and Reynolds or Tintoretto swept a curve of
color from their pencils, as a musician the ca-
dence of a note, unerring and to be measured,
if you please, afterward, with the exactitude
of divine law.”

This is a fine sketch of true genius; but I
look at the slender, shining wake on the water
yonder, where a wild duck has been swim-

34 SYLVAN SECRETS.

ming, and I note the same freedom of curve,
the same unconscious sweep along the line of
beauty which has immortalized the painter,
the glass-blower, and the carver. And hark! |
the mocking-bird again—a gush of artless mel-
ody rippling away through the slumberous
wood—sweet as the flute-notes of Marsyas or
the lyre-chords of Apollo.

I do not hear half of what my friend reads,
for how can I listen to sea and wind and pine
moan and bird song and Ruskin all at once.
I watch the fishing-smack out yonder, beat-
ing in against the breeze. Now the mainsail
is white against the sky; anon it is black as
ink; again it is gray touched with brown. 1
used to see pictures of ships with gloomy sails
blotching an almost indigo sky, and I thought
the pictures in bad color. Now I feel how
true they were. Even Ruskin might make
the same mistake in a criticism. This for in-
stance:

Both Raphel and Rembrandt are masters,
indeed; but neither of them masters of light
and shade, in treatment of which the first is
always false, the second always vulgar. The
only absolute masters of light and shade are
those who never make you think of light and
shade more than nature herself does.

But I find that nature makes me think of
light and shade all the time. Indeed, I see
nothing else in nature so emphasized here, so
accentuated there, so graded, so obtruded, so
dashed about and experimented with, so in-
sisted upon at every turn, as light and shade,
and he must be a vigorous brushman, cer-
tainly, who can get into a picture more lhght
and shade than nature habitually uses on her
smallest canvas. Even now the sails of the
smack are shining like a flake of moonshine

WITH RUSKIN. 35

against the dark magnolias of a low shore
line, as it glides into the little harbor.

After all even Ruskin is hard to read in the
“lap of nature.” Give me something lighter,
a volume of Keats or Wordsworth; or—no,
give me nothing by nobody; let me lie in this
balmy spot and dream and see visions and be
free from the cunning of genius and the tricks
of talent.

CERYLE ALCYON.

THE kingfisher is a dash of bright blue in
every choice bit of brookside poetry or paint-
ing; he is a warm fragment of tropical life
and color, left over from the largess be-
stowed upon our frigid world by one of those
fervid periods of ancient creative force so
dear to the imagination, and so vaguely
limned on the pages of science. The bird,
by some fine law, keeps its artistic value fully
developed. You never see Alcyon out of
keeping with the environment; even when
going into the little dark hole in the earth,
where its nest is hidden, the flash of tur-
quoise light with which it disappears leaves a
sheen on the observer’s memory as fascinat-
ing and evasive as some fleeting poetical al-
lusion.

Ceryle Alcyon! how sweet the name in the
midst of those jarring sounds invented by sci-
ence. Coming upon it in the catalogues is
like hearing a cultured voice in the midst of
a miner’s broil, or like meeting a beautiful
child in a cabinet of fossils. Ceryle Alcyon
suggests sunshine, bright water, dreamy
skies, and that rich foliage growing near
streams—a foliage to which the adjective
lush clings like some rather ornamental cater-
pillar, with an underhint of classical affinity
very tenuous and filmy. It is a disappoint-
ment to one’s imagination at first to find out
that so beautiful a creature as the Alcyon can-
not sing; but there is just compensation in

36

CERYLE ALCYON. 37

the knowledge which soon comes, that in-
strumental music is the bird’s forte—he plays
on the water as on a dulcimer, bringing out
pure liquid notes (at long intervals, indeed)
too sweet and elusive to be fixed in any
written score. To watch Ceryle Alcyon
strike the silver strings of a summer brook
and set them to vibrating-is worth the sacri-
fice of any leisure hour. It is the old touch
of Apollo, swift, sure, masterful, virile, and
yet tender as the very heart of nature.
‘‘Plash!” A sudden gleam of silver,
amethyst, and royal purple, a whorl as of a
liquid bloom on the water, rings and dim-
ples and bubbles, and in the midst of it all,
the indescribable sound from the smitten
stream, its one chord rendered to perfection.

Nature sketched the kingfisher, in the first
place, with a certain humorous expression,
which still lurks in the overlarge crest and al-
most absurdly short legs; but the bird itself is
always in earnest. It may look at times like
a bright, sharp exclamation point atthe close
of some comic passage in the phenakism of
nature, but it is the very embodiment of
sincerity; in fact, the birds are all realists
of the prosiest kind. One might as well look
for something large and morally lifting in
a minutely analytical novel, as to expect a
bird to be sentimental. A worm—in the case
of the kingfisher a minnow—is the highest
object of avian ambition—the realist dotes on
one’s motive in twisting one’s thumbs—and or-
nithic life does not generate poetry. The
kingfisher knows his brook from source to
mouth, for he has conned it during countless
ages. Not that he has lived so long individ-
ually, the knowledge exists in heredity—the
transmitted sum of ten thousand ancestral

38 SYLVAN SECRETS.

lives devoted to the one end, analysis of the
brook, minute observation of the minnow’s
tricksy ways, the time to strike, in a word,
how to get a living on the wing. He has
gazed into the wavering shadowy water so
long that he has become habitually given to
a see-saw motion suggestive of vertigo in a
harmless form. I> have lain on a favored
spot and looked, with half-closed eyes, far
down the sheeny course of a rivulet at the
flight of this happy knight of the fish-spear
as he came toward me, and I am sure there
is some obscure correlation between the
motion vf his sky-mailed wings and that of
the flowing water.

Evolution tinges everything. One grows
like what one contemplates, and Alcyon may
well be said to have grown, through ages of
transmitted and accumulating contemplation,
like the swaying and lapsing water he was
created to love. But his voice is the very
irony of mirth, a derisive and soulless chuckle,
sounding like one long, rasping note broken
up into ascore of rusty fragments and shaken
through a sieve; indeed, his vocal organs,
including his tongue, are rudimentary, shut-
ting away the possibility of song. Wilson
likens the cry to the sound of a watchman’s
rattle, but it has an expression of its own, in
consonance with that of the babbling waves
and rustling acquatic plants. Stripped of its
entourage, it closely resembles the chattering,
rarer cry of the tree-frog.

Our belted Alcyon is an expert flyer,
balancing himself adroitly in the air above a
pool or rapid, until he fixes the precise lurk-
ing-place of his prey, then swooping down
with almost electrical quickness into the water
to strike it. When in level flight the bird

CERYLE ALCYON. 39

has a peculiarly flattened appearance for one
of its bulk, which gives its big head and
long, thick bill accentuated prominence
verging on the ludicrous in effect. At rest
it appears to sit unnecessarily close to its
feet, so to speak, its short legs being much
bent, as if in readiness for a leap into the air.
Therefore, for obvious reasons, the kingfisher
has been the despair of artists, luring them
with incomparable colors and repelling them
with absurdly unmanageable attitudes and
outlines. The poet even must falter at the
mouth of the bird’s dismal subterraneous
den, wherein are stored the beautiful white
eggs. This semi-reptilian nest habit, not
much better than that of the land turtle, is
singularly out of keeping with the beautiful
cleanliness of the kingfisher’s aerial and
aquatic life. So nice, indeed, is he, for the
most part, that water will not wet him when
he plunges into it, and he even comes out of his
dank, musty burrow without a touch of dirt
on his resplendent feathers.

The family (Alcedinide) to which Ceryle
Alcyon belongs, consists of nineteen genera
and over a hundred species, but the fish-
eating members are the only burrowers,
probably, while the insect-eating and reptile-
catching ones nest, as a rule, in the hollows
of trees. We have but one genus (Ceryle)
and two species in the United States, the
second species being the Texas green king-
fisher (Ceryle Americana cabanisi). Alcyon
ranges as far north as Michigan, even much
farther, oscillating back and forth with that
weather temperature which keeps the small
streams free of ice. Leaving Michigan in
early autumn, where I saw Alcyon on the
northernmost point of the Leelenaw penin-

40 SYLVAN SECRETS.

sula, I reached St. Augustine, Florida, in the
first week in November, finding the bird on
all the streams that I examined between the
two points.

It has always struck me as most singular
that minks, weasels, and snakes do not ex-
terminate Ceryle Alcyon on account of the
burrowing habit. Many of the nest-burrows
that I have explored have been quite large
enough for an averaged-sized mink to enter,
and the least of them would have been
traversed easily by a weasel, to say nothing
of snakes. Of course, in the incubating sea-
son the bird might guard the nest; but it
would seem that the young must be terribly
exposed; still not more so, perhaps, than those
of the whippoorwill.

The burrow is usually in the clayey bank or
bluff of astream, entering almost horizontally
to a distance of from two to ten feet; but I
found one that descended vertically two feet
and then turned at about right-angles. This
was near the edge of a brook bluff in Middle
Indiana.

Drawing upon my notes and my recollec-
tions of Ceryle Alcyon, I see again the hun-
dreds of trout-brooks and bass-streams I
have whipped from the Manistee to the Kissi-
mee, and all the little rivers I have voyaged
upon from the Boardman to Pearl River, but
the one stream that I remember as fairly
haunted with this bird is the Salliquoy, a
strong rivulet in the hill-country of Cherokee,
Georgia. In a half rotten tulip pirogue I
madea slow voyage down this stream during
the last of April and the first of May, a sea-
son when the leaves and flowers of that wild,
strange region are at the fullest stage of their
development. I started far up among the

CERYLE ALCYON. 41

little mountain billows that break around the
north-eastern rim of Dry Valley and worked
down to the beautiful and deep Coosawattee.
It appears to my memory now that nearly
every bough that swung over the water bore
its belted kingfisher, while the sound of their
diving in the shallows was almost continuous.
I dare say distance has trebled the number of
birds and exaggerated their activity, but no-
where else have I spent so happy a fortnight
with Alcyon. Iremember that my compan-
ion remarked, with perfect youthful sincer-
ity, that it was a comfort to realize the ina-
bility of the kingfishers to catch the two-
pound bass we were angling for. This same
companion, standing in the stern of our
pirogue, balancing himself like the born ca-
noeist that he was, and playing one of those
gamey mountain bass, was as picturesque a
figure as ever delighted an artist or empha-
sized a landscape. He was the prince of
archers, too, and many a whistling shaft he
sped at the wild things in the air and on the
banks. So intense was his sportman’s delight
in every phase of outdoor excitement that it
was almost painful to witness his ecstasy of
hesitation when one fine morning, justas he
had hooked a large fighting bass, which was de-
termined to break out of the water, he saw an
ibis, arare stranger in that region, standing
not more than forty yards from him. His
bow and arrows lay at his feet, the bass was
demanding the strictest attention, a word
would scare the bird away! I forbear to fill in
the sketch. The reader may finish it to suit
himself.

But to get back to Ceryle Alcyon and its
ways. It is probable that Halcyornis toliapt-
cus, a fossil of the eocene, may have some re-

42 SYLVAN SECRETS.

mote relationship to our bird, but the testi-
mony of this does not amount to evidence.
We must take Alcyon as he is, without any
genealogical table or ancient armorial relics.
He is not an aristocrat, if the index of aris-
tocracy is a well-formed foot, for, like all his
family, he has but three good toes, and they
are as rough and ugly as warts. Compared
with those of the mocking-bird, indeed, his
feet appear scarcely more than rudimentary
(about ona par with his vocal organs, advance:
ing the comparison so as to weigh his rattling
laugh with the ecstatic song of Mimus polyg-
lottus), still he perches very firmly and, after
a fashion, gracefully. His descent upon a
minnow is a miracle of motion, accompanied
by a surpassing feat of vision. We will
imagine him seated on a bough thirty feet
above the brook-stream. Thesunshine comes
down in flakes like burning snow upon the
twinkling, palpitating water, making the
surface flicker and glimmer in a way to dis-
tract any eye. Down in this water is the
minnow which Alcyon is to catch and swal-
low, a minnow whose sides are silver just
touched with gold, flitting and flashing here
and there, never still, flippant as the wavelets
themselves. Mark the bird's attitude and ex-
pression as they blend into a sort of serio-
comic enigma—crest erect and bristling, eyes
set and burning, bill elevated at a slight
angle, tail depressed, wings shut close,
the whole figure motionless. Suddenly he
falls like a thought, a sky-blue film marking
the line of descent to where he strikes. He
pierces the pool like an arrow, disappearing
for a second in the centre of a great whirling,
leaping bubbling dimple of the water, with a
rousical plunge-note once heard never forgot-

CERYLE ALCYON. 43

ten. Rarely does he miss his aim. If your
eyes are quick you will see the hapless “ silver
side ” feebly wriggling in the grip of that
powerful bill as Ceryle Alcyon emerges from
the dancing waves and resumes his perch,
happier, but none the wetter, on account of
the bath. Now the wonder of this vision-feat
is not in seeing the minnow from the perch,
but in continuing to see it during that arrow-
like descent into the water; or, if you choose
to refer the success of the stroke to accuracy
of flight, then try to understand what
amazing accuracy it is! .For, in that case,
Alcyon must take into exact account the dif-
ference between the apparent and the true
position of an object in the water as viewed
at an angle from without.

The negroes of North Georgia had caught
from the Cherokee Indians the art of making
the blow-gun, and I found one old slave who
firmly believed that a blow-gun arrow, pointed
with the lower mandible of the kingfisher,
was the only one with which the bird could
be killed. This fanciful conceit may be added
to the long catalogue of superstitions which
cling to the history of Alcyon. My archer
companion of the Salliquoy had the upper
band of his quiver decorated with a king-
fisher’s head, to signify that his arrows
would fly straight to the living target. And
the badge was not an idle boast, for he stood
in my canoe and killed a green heron, stop-
ping it in mid flight with a pewter-headed
shaft from a mulberry bow.

Ceryle Alcyon digs its own burrow, which
it may be said to do on the wing, so rapid are
the motions connected with the performance.
The beginning of the excavation is made with
the bill, while the bird balances on its wings

44 SYLVAN SECRETS.

close to the face of the .clay bluff into which
it means to project its adit. There is a fine
suggestion of blended royalty and democratic
self-dependence in the apparition of this
splendid creature turning itself into a richly
jeweled tunnelling-machine or drifting appa-
ratus, hurling itself beak foremost into the
earth.

Day by day the digging goes on, the male
and female both laboring, I am led to believe,
until the mine is completed, a mine, by the
way, admirably constructed for self-drainage,
but scarcely ventilated at all; a grimy, dark,
filthy den at best, and often unspeakably
loathsome. No wonder Alcyon laughs as
soon as he emerges from such a cavern into
the sweet light and air of a May morning!
No wonder, either, that the laugh has in ita
strong touch of reptilian indifference to vocal
harmony! Here is the best instance, speak-
ing without any reference to comparative an-
atomy, of a bird still attached to the lower
life of its archetype, the life of a burrowing,
grovelling, repellant amphibian, but enjoying
also, to the full, the broad liberty, the sweet
luxury, the inexpressible delight of avian
pursuits by flood and field.

What would our noisy mill-streams and
bass-rivulets be without Ceryle Alcyon? As
for me, I should find a prime esthetic value
gone from angling, were the kingfisher with-
drawn from brookside nature. His laugh
may come in now and then just in time to
taunt one over a piscatorial disaster, and
hence be very ire-provoking, but, as a rule, I
have found it a rather refreshing giggle of
delight over the landing of an unusually
game fish. _

‘* pid-d-d d-d-d!” sang out Ceryle Alcyon

CERYLE ALCYON. 45

one morning on the Salliquoy, just as the ar-
cher saw a three-pound bass he was playing
leap. out of the water and shake itself free of
the hook. ‘‘Pid-d-d-d-d-d!” It was the most
inopportune jeer imaginable to the ear of the
baffled angler. Down went the rod along
with some classical allusion to hades, and up
came the bow and arrow from the bottom of
the pirogue. The archer had a most becom-
ing phrensy in his visage as he poised him-
self and drew the arrow almost into the bow.

Alcyon sat on a dogwood branch, amid the
clusters of great white flowers, distant sixty
yards from the bowman.

There was a tragic pause for the aim, a
knotting of the muscles on the straining
arms, then the recoil of the bow, the low sibi-
lation of the missile. I watched with atten-
tive eyes, throughout the flat trafectory, the
flight of the feathered shaft.

‘‘Take that, you snickering idiot!” ex-
claimed the irate archer, just as he thought
the arrow would strike.

‘* Pid-d-d-d-d-d!” retorted Alcyon, taking
to wing just in time to give his space to the
shaft, and away he went down the winding
course of the stream until he was lost in the
gloom and sheen of distance. A spray of
dogwood blooms, severed by the shot, fell up-
on the water, and then the ‘“ tchick” of the
arrow-head, striking among the pebbles of a
shallow ‘‘riffle” far down the stream, came
back like an echo of the bird’s final note, to
make the archer’s defeat most emphatic.

The semi-comical grotesquerie of the king-
fisher’s ways is exemplified in his attitude
while suspending himself in the air above the
water by a peculiar alar motion, when his
head is thrust forward and downward to the

46 SYLVAN SECRETS.

full extent of his somewhat constricted neck, »
with the crest erected so that each feather
stands to itself, and the short tail spread like
afan. When, after a season of rain, the
streams are not clear, Alcyon hovers in this
way close to the water’s surface, and plunges
upon his prey from on the wing, after the
manner of the prairie hawk.

A gentleman in Alabama told me that
while trolling with a float and silver min-
now in one of the bass-streams of the Sand-
mountain region, he actually hooked and
caught a kingfisher which struck at the bait.
The incident, though unusual, is not wonder-
ful, and might happen at any time when the
troller should have out enough line to relieve
the bird of fear.

The swallowing capacity of Alcyon is enor-
mous; he makes nothing of taking downa
stout minnow of three inches in length, an
operation nearly always followed by a rasp-
ing snicker of gustatory delight and a wrig-
gle equally expressive. Upon such an occa-
sion he looks down upon the stream which
has furnished him the delicious morsel with
a glare of supercilious ingratitude in his half-
fishy, half-beautiful eyes, as if he never
should ask another favor or want another
fish.

Near an old mill, in which I had my quar-
ters for a bream-season, two kingfishers had
their burrow, the entrance being just above
the longitudinal timbers of the race-way. I
used to sit on the cap of the fore-bay with the
big water-wheel jarring and groaning under
me, and cast my lure into the stream far be-
low. From this same perch I could watch
and study the busy Alcyons as they speared
the minnows and bore them into the burrow .

CERYLE ALCYON. 44

to their young. The miller told me that for
years the pair had nested in the same place,
and he would not permit me to explore it.
He went on to detail a number of reminis-
cences in which the birds figured picturesque-
ly; one I remember was to the effect that
a hawk had pursued the male kingfisher so
savagely, once upon a time, that the poor
fugitive had rushed into the mill and hidden
itself in the hollow of a grain-shaft. This
love of the miller for his birds struck me as
beautifully romantic, especially as the mill
was ina remote mountain ‘‘ pocket” where
any thing to love was as hard to find as were
the deer in the pine thickets on the stony
foot-hills, and considering the fact that he
was an old sinner as tough in his fiber as the
oaken beams of his race-way.

The kingfisher has inspired the genius of
poets, legend-makers, superstition-mongers,
and scientists all the way from Ovid down to
Mr. R. B. Sharpe of our own day, who has
published a brilliant and wonderful mono-
graph of the Alcedinide, with many excel-
lent figures. M. Rolland inhis ‘‘ Fawne Pap-
ulatre de la France” relates a legend to the
effect that Alcyon, in leaving the ark, flew
straight toward the setting sun, and that his
back caught its blue from the sky above, and
his breast was scorched by the luminary be-
low to a brownish, clouded hue. Its head is
worn as a charm by savages and was conspic-
uous on a fetich string I saw in the possession
of a negro conjurer. Its dried body was once
thought able to ward off lightning and to in-
dicate the direction of the wind. But, no
matter what may be true of the Kuropean
and other foreign kingfishers, our Ceryle
Alcyon is not gifted with any supra-avian

48 SYLVAN SECRETS.

powers, and outside of his dismal den is a
bonnie blue sprite of the water-ways, living
a bright and happy life forever, perhaps; for
I never have found a sick, a decrepit, or a
dead one, nor have I ever heard of any body
who could testify that any of our wild birds
ever die of true disease or of old age.

The most beautiful kingfisher superstition
or legend I ever have known of was told to
me by an old negro in Georgia. How far it
. extended among the Southern slaves I have
no means of knowing. Here it is:

‘‘ When you is a leetle boy, not mo’ ’n six
year old, ef yo’ go to de ribber an’ see de
minner at sunrise fo’ de kingfisher do, den
yo’ nebber die ’ceptin’ yo’ git drownded; an
den ef yo’ does git drownded, de kingfisher
tote yo’ sperit right off ter hebben, ’ca’se der’s
no use ’r talkin’ bout habin’ any bad luck ef
yo’ got de eye like de ole kingfisher.”

I say the superstition is very beautiful, but
in effect it is the same old story of the heavy
chances against the seeker after lasting hap-
piness, for how much harder is it for a camel
to amble through the eye of a needle than for
any living being to see a minnow in the
water quicker than can the incomparable
eyes of the Ceryle Alcyon?

SWAMP SKETCHES.

A SOUTHERN swamp is to me a very fasci-
nating place, a genuine land of dreams. In
a realistic sense it is mere mud, water, tus-
socks, gloom, tangled vines, and dusky tree-
masses; but there is that in those dim, damp,
luxuriant jungles which appeals to all that
is romantic in one’s nature. It was my fort-
une once to pitch my tent on a ridge of sand
lying between the waters of the Gulf of
Mexico and the mazes of a swamp whose
almost impenetrable woods and brakes stood
like a black wall by night and like a sheeny
screen by day set against a sky as tender as
the petals of a hyacinth. No sign of human
life was near, not even a fisherman’s hut.

The beach of my sand bar was the most
perfect I ever saw—white, hard, and gently
sloping out to sea, where the greenish waves
ran through dreamy sunshine to the far
white line of the horizon. A week of south-
easterly winds brought up from the Carib-
bean islands a soft fragrance and balm, and
kept the water in brisk motion, so that it
lapped the sand with a melodious roar, and
so that a dancing zigzag line of silvery spray
marked the surf margin as far as one could
see,

In the south-west a long crescent of marsh
ran from the swamp to the sand. There all
manner of sea birds congregated at times
with a shimmer of wings anda clash of

ie 49

50 SYLVAN SECRETS.

voices that touched the imagination strangely
enough.

My boatmen, both of whom were creoles,
so-called, could not imagine why I should
have taken such a considerable voyage
merely to stay a few days on a sand-bank
reading books under a tent-fly, or to make
journeys into a dismal and lonely swamp,
neither of which would have afforded them
any pleasure whatever. They evidently
deemed my motives obscure and mysterious,
if not wholly unchristian.

I chose this particular place more by acci-
dent than otherwise, but it proved to be the
best for my purposes that I could possibly
have found. The sand ridge ran for a long
way back into the swamp, and thus gave me
a safe and easy road to the heart of a typical
jungle.

The outer fringe of the swamp growth was
aline of marsh grass growing about waist-
high and of a dusky olive-green in color.
Next came a dense growth of cane with scat-
tering clusters of bay trees, then a hummock
of live-oaks, beyond which, lonely, gloomy,
and set in eternal wastes of water and mud,
stretched the moss-hung cypress forests and
magnolia groves. From a little way out to
sea this vast jungle had the appearance of a
mass of low hills running in a billowy line
against the sky.

No one without actual experience in ex-
ploring such a region can form any adequate
idea of even the general effect of its features.

Except where the cypress trees grow thin
in basins of water the plants of all kinds,
from immense live oaks down to the smallest
aquatic weeds, are packed together so that
one can scarcely force a way through them,

SWAMP SKETCHES. 51

And yet the soil is not at all rich, even on
the hummocks, as compared with the soil
of our Western prairies. It is by night that
the swamp shows itself to the full expression
of its gloom, its solitude, and its real grand-
eur. Leaving the boatmen at the camp, I
spent the greater part of a night in the very
heart of the jungle simply to study it.

The moon did not rise till after ten, so I
had two hours of intense darkness during
which I used my ears instead of my eyes.

Silence vast and profound is the rule in the
_ Swamp, but the exception is often very im-
pressive, sometimes startling. As an in-
stance of this: I’ was comfortably seated on
a log between two cypress trees, about five
feet above the ground, waiting for the moon
to rise. There was no light to relieve the
oppressive blackness save a faint gleam of
sky overhead where some pale stars winked
through arift. The sea breeze could not
reach me, but it sighed very lightly in the
topmost feathery tufts of the trees. The
beach. was so far away that only a faint,
mellow roar came from its swashing surf.

IT had a gun across my knees, and so felt
no actual fear, but yet there was an unpleas-
ant sense of my helplessness in the presence
' of darkness, silence, solitude, and the spirit
hovering in the midst of them. It was asif
a hand were about to be laid upon me from
behind, or as if a great mesh of destruction
were upon the point of closing around me in
the darkness. A damp chill hung in the
still atmosphere, accompanied by a peculiar
musty odor, comparable to nothing else, ex-
cept, perhaps, the noisome wafts from old
tombs and caves.

- In the midst of all this an owl hooted not

52: SYLVAN SECRETS.

far off, and the cry was so emphasized and
exaggerated by contrast with the environment
that its effect was indescribable. At first I
did not recognize it as an owl’s voice, but
referred it to some wild beast,—a panther,
perhaps,—and put myself on the defensive.
During the years that I was a soldier I was
never half so frightened in fight as I was by
that sound. Of course I pulled myself to-
gether in a moment, but the sudden impres-
sion was one never to be forgotten; a pang
of awful terror whisked through me lke an
electric shock.

I suppose that every one who has sat all
alone in a forest by night has felt the pecul-
iar impression as of a dusky presence draw-
ing stealthily closer and closer to him. It is
imaginary, but no real thing could be more
clearly outlined to one’s inner sense. For a
while after the owl’s hideous notes had died
away in diminuendo echoes throughout the
forest caverns this breathless black spectre of
the night oppressed me, but I finally shook it
off.

The next sound that I heard was that of a
body, perhaps a raccoon, passing down a
tree-trunk near by with a scratching and
scrambling that was a relief to my nerves,
for it was familiar and realistic. At length
the little animal reached the ground and
made its way to a puddle of water, where it
played for some time. Then something
frightened it,—it may have become suddenly
aware of my presence,—and it scampered far
away through the woods. Somehow its pre-
cipitate flight affected me strangely, and I
half imagined that some hideous being of the
darkness had approached from the depth of
the jungle and frightened itaway. I listened

SWAMP SKETCHES. 53

with suspended breath, but not a sound came
to my ears. There must have followed
nearly an hour of utter silence, such as no
inexperienced person can possibly imagine, a
silence felt as a positive element far exceed-
ing in impressiveness the mere absence of all
sounds.

No doubt my self-consciousness, as I sat
there systematically observing every sensa-
tion and every fancy generated by the sur-
roundings, helped to heighten the influence
of the situation. Moreover, there was an at-
mospheric oppressiveness Owing to the dense-
ness of the jungle and the lack of free ven-
tilation.

It was with a sense of relief that I noted
the first gleam that foretold the coming of the
moon; but instead of softening the effect the
slowly-increasing light added a myriad gro-
tesque features to the landscape around me.

I could understand now how the early
Spanish and French explorers of these South-
ern regions came to tell such wonderful sto-
ries of old castles in Florida, and of ruined
cities in the midst of almost impenetrable
swamps; for when the moonshine became
strong enough to guide me I wandered from
place to place, fastening in my memory the
scenes as they appeared, and the commonest
form of the cypress and live oak clumps seen
beyond any opening, especially over water,
were those of ruined villas and castles, old
moats, and crumbling battlements.

The frogs and alligators began a desultory
grunting and booming as the moon came up,
but these sounds died out soon, giving way,
apparently, to the wild hilarity of a great
laughing owl, whose voice was equal to a
medium steam whistle in its shrillness and

5A SYLVAN SECRETS.

compass. It was answered by another, far
away, ringing vaguely and faintly, like an
echo lost in the interminable jungle.

As the moonlight grew I made my way
from place to place, noting the wonderful
changes that came over the landscape with
each turn. The trees seemed to grow taller
and taller, the shadows blacker and blacker
in contrast with the slanting streams of pale,
yellowish light falling through the rifts.
The tangles of vines and the dense masses of
bay and haw trees often forced me to make
wide detours. I crawled over great heaps of
fallen logs, branches, and tree tops, and
through nets of green-briar, till at length I
-came to the shore of alakelet, which instantly
brought into my mind Poe’s

Dark turn of Auber
In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.

It was astill, dark, sullen sheet of water
framed in a fantastically grotesque border of
jungle, upon which the moonlight was falling
with ghostly effect.

I was tired, almost overcome, indeed, with
the exertion of my ramble, and was glad to
perch myself on a huge cypress knee with
my heavy rubber boots dangling and drip-
ping. Ihad come to study the swamp, and
nothing was to prevent me. Mopping my
face and panting, I looked out over the only
-gcene I ever saw that would wholly excuse
the adjective weird. Imagine slanting shreds
of pallid fog hanging like giant wisps of gos-
samer from the water, which was like ink,
to the tree-tops which were like charcoal
masses against a filmy sky, and then remem-
ber the awful solitude, the desolation, the
stillness, and that nameless hovering spirit

SWAMP SKETCHES. 55

of night which haunts remote, uninhabited
regions. No phrasing may suggest more
than a shadow of such a scene. Some large
white birds, snowy herons I supposed,
startled by my approach, had risen into the
air out of a patch of saw-grass and were flap-
ping aimlessly hither and thither, now in the
light, now in the shadows, as silent as the
brooding silence itself. If I had been the
only man in the world, I could not have real-
ized more fully the meaning of the word soli-
tude. I knew what the swamps of the coal-
age of geology looked like; indeed for the
time I was back in the days when the groves
of lepidodendron and the thickets of giant
cane were slowly sinking into the ‘‘ carbon-
iferous seas.” Below me were vast forests
buried in the mud and sand, and still the pro-
cess Was going on. |

I have often mentioned the peculiar effect
of the plashing sound made by a fish leaping
out of still water in the dead: of night: A
large bass, at least I thought it was from its
motion, sprang up in the midst of a dreamy
spot of moonlight where the water was deep,
and, fairly somer-saulting, fell with a plunge
back into the ripple he had made.

On the side of the lake over against where
I sat, a group of immense cypress knees
looked like a castle with towers reduplicated
in the water underneath them. Farther
away fantastic clouds of fog bleached by the
moonlight drifted against a black wall, like
that of Babylon, upon which stood giant
sentinels with spears and shields and gro-
tesque helmets.

Higher climbed the moon, a wan, lop-sided
disk of silver, and the scene changed slowly
until the lake was shimmering like quick-

56 SYLVAN SECRETS.

silver, and the fog had arranged itself in
beautiful lace-work patterns falling like filmy
curtains before the dark masses of the jun-
gle. Although I could not notice any air
current, this beautiful drapery was swung
gently so that it undulated and was folded
upon itself in the most delicate ways imagin-
able.

The opposite side of the little lake now ap-
peared immeasurably distant, and the out-
lines of the tree-masses were so softened that
they looked like vague mountains rising out
of a calm, dreamy sea, or like those floating
scenes in a mirage on our Western plains.

Meantime the silence and the solitude had
been intensified, so to say, until the effect
was almost unbearable.

By one of those cerebral tricks for which
there is no explanation, the impulse came
upon me to break all that infinite, solemn
silence by firing my gun. No sooner thought
than acted. Right and left, boom, boom, I
let go the two heavy charges, and the sounds
seemed to shake the earth and jar the firma-
ment above. They leaped away into the re-
motest distance and then came rattling and
tumbling back upon my ears in a thou-
sand echoes of every kind.

What followed was quite common and nat-
ural, but it appalled me for a moment, I do
not know why. With a great clash of wings
an enormous raft of ducks rushed into the
air out of the water at the edge of the saw-
grass and went away with a stormy roar into
the convolutions of the fog.

After this the silence fell again, deeper,
broader, more oppressive than ever. There
was something awfully threatening, even
menacing init. I hurriedly reloaded my gun,

SWAMP SKETCHES. BY

as if that could protect’ me from such an
assailant. I remember that at this point I
thought of my wanderings on Okechobee and
recalled seeing a will-o-the-wisp play its
pranks on a marsh of the Satilla.

But I might write volumes and yet not de-
scribe a Southernswamp. From the’ nature
of things explorers of these awful mazes are
few and timid. I have said nothing of the
billions upon billions of musquitoes, nothing
of the malaria, and I shall not because I was
fortified against both, and they did not
trouble me. I came out of the jungle im-
pressed with only its grandeur of effect, and
with the suggestions its strange features had
engendered in my imagination.

No sky ever looked purer or sweeter, no
sea brighter, no air ever filled me with such
a sense of freshness. Indeed I came forth
upon my white sand-bar as one might come
out of a tomb into a blooming garden.

The boatmen were asleep upon a heap of
grass covered with asail, and the little smack
was tossing at anchor not more than a stone’s
throw out from the surf line. Far out on
the horizon a ship with all sails set was bowl-
ing along, and there was a melody in my
ears like the low singing of a multitude of
voices. I lay down upon the sand and
slept,

IN THE MATTER OF SHAKESPEARE.

I HAVE sometimes found myself indulging
the fancy that Shakespeare’s genius has been
greatly overrated—or rather overstated—
even by the most cautious critics and com-
mentators; but I should not like to be forced
into a defence of the fancy. Monuments are
sacred things, and few men will deny that
the Bible and the body of Shakespeare’s
works are, to English-speaking people at
least, the most venerated of all monuments.

How could any man, no matter how self-
confident, go cheerfully about the attempt to
prove that Shakespeare has been overrated
as a genius? In the first place, he would
have to be a most extraordinary genius him-
self, and distinguished as such in the world,
before he could command even respectful at-
tention as an iconoclast. In the next place,
he would have to stem the tide of what has
come to be hereditary popular opinion; and
he would have to bear the taunts, jibes, kicks,
ana cuffs of all the Shakespeare-cranks in the
whole world—to say nothing of the ire of all
the publishers who get a big income off the
old poet’s books. Lastly, he would have no
way of proving that the poorest verse in
Shakespeare’s poorest play is not better than
the strongest that Tennyson or Emerson ever
wrote.

Most of us are slow to learn that a Booth
may do as much for Shakespeare as the great
dramatist can do for a Booth, and that Mod.

58

SHAKESPEARE. 59

jeska may put into Juliet a breath of life not
known to Shakespeare’s girl. Genius is gen-
ius, and asserts itself as superior, in its own
particular way, to every other genius in the
world. Shakespeare was a genius, and Victor
Hugo was as near the right as any critic
when he said that criticism cannot apply to
genius. We may point out errors of meth-
ods, of judgment, of execution, in the works
of a genius, but that part of those works
which testifies of genius is always beyond our
reach.

In Shakespeare’s works this unreachable
and therefore unassailable part is very large,
and it is incomparably many-sided and many-
colored. One reads Shakespeare with confi-
dence, because one feels no lurking insincerity
between his lines; there is no conscious art,
in other words, padded and intercallated in
the tissue and fibre of the work; no posing
and attitudinizing of the author in the presence
of his creations. We feel sometimes that we
have been duped and made game of, but we
never catch the trickster wagging his thumbs
and puffing his cheeks at us. Indeed Shakes-
peare was the first humorist who did not
laugh at his own jokes, and he so far remains
the last. His simplicity sometimes borders
close upon mere baldness and flatness, but his
finish never suggests (as does most of our con-
temporary work) a laundry secret.

I should adore Shakespeare, if for nothing
else, in recognition of his contempt for ana-
lytical realism. How he dashes on color, and
with what divine steadfastness he sticks to
heroic ideals, even when he appears to be dal-
lying with infinitesimals! You never find him
probing and picking at a ganglion of motive
_to trace it back to some obscure origin, as if

60 ~ SYLVAN SECRETS.

the whole of life depended upon the absolute
accuracy to be attained in microscopic analy-
sis. His characters are just as distinctly in-
dividual and just as mysterious as real flesh
and blood men and women. He, himself, too
is intensely human, weak and strong, silly
and wise, careful and careless, neat and slip-
shod, clean and dirty, but he is never mean
or vicious. We may find a good deal in
Chaucer which is so obscene that we doubt
that old poet’s moral grain and fibre, but
Shakespeare does not revel in the filth he
sometimes handles. There is a severity, an
immovable manner, a steadfastness of coun-
tenance, so to say, attending him in his deal-
ings with the unclean, as if he felt no touch of
any sentiment whatever in the matter.

Your modern artist, if he dared speak his
feeling, would say that Shakespeare was not
an artist. Well, he was not; he was some-
thing better; he was a genius whose power
needed none of the factitious aids character-
istic of modern literary and graphic art. He
had a superb imagination and an infinitely
flexible style of expression without any tech-
nical expertness or smartness whatever.
Prettiness and exquisite finish of surface he
never thought of. Even his sonnets have
something of the swing and freedom of a
young god’s movement. I confess that I do
not have any idea of what they mean, but I
feel their value as I feel the value of the sky
and the clouds—they are fire and smoke—pas-

sion and dimness. If we compare Shakes-
- peare with some great writer of the present
day, Victor Hugo, say, the first strong line
of contrast is the self-consciousness of the lat-
ter. Wecannotignore Hugo’s or Goethe's ob-
vious attitudinizing in front of their subjects..

SHAKESPEARE. 61

Even Tennyson uses the egotistic pronoun
with an emphasis not to be misunderstood.

Shakespeare was lucky in many ways, as
genius always is, and he has had better luck
since he died than he had while living: an-
other franchise of the children of glory. As
the years have rolled by publishers have in-
creased, and what publisher ever died with-
out issuing his special edition of Shakespeare?
As the leaves of the forests have authors in-
creased; what scribbler ever goes hungry to
his grave without having written his essay
on the Bard of Avon? Readers have become
as countless as the sands of. the sea, and all
have read or are just going to read Hamlet
and the rest. Weare born with an heredi
tary Shakespeare bias, and we go toward his
works as the young snapping-turtle goes
toward water, as if the act were an instinctive
one.

There are men who, if they dared, would
burn at the stake any human being who in
his sincerity should admit that he found As |
You Like It a very dull affair. Once in the
hospitable home of the late Paul H. Hayne I
said that I did not regard some of Shakes-
peare’s works as of any great value, when lo!
the gracious and kindly Southern poet leaped
to his feet and poured forth upon my devoted
head a flood of eloquent and indignant protest
the like of which I never have heard else-
where. Indeed, one does not dare be inde-
pendent in the matter of discussing the old
master. Not worship Shakespeare! one might
as well deny the attraction of gravitation, or
suggest a new theory of politeness which
would ignore the swallow-tailed coat. Some
things are true because it is death to deny
them, Snobbery is kept alive and fat all over

62 SYLVAN SECRETS.

the world because it is safer to be a snob than
to be a sincere and independent man. The
lords and kings and princes have said that a
swallow-tailed coat is just the thing, and even
the hotel waiter cannot cheapen it. So the
Moguls of criticism have said: ‘‘ Shakespeare
is incomparable,” and how shall any clod
gainsay it? They used to say something
pretty about Homer, too, but Greek is no
longer fashionable. It proves something, how-
ever, this firm hold that the old English bard
keeps on the moulders of public opinion. It
requires extraordinary genius to live up to
the standard these intolerant worshippers
have set for their god, and so far Shakespeare
has lost little ground, if we may judge by the
increased number of editions he is subjected
to by enthusiastic editors and hopeful pub- .
lishers every year.

This matter of editing Shakespeare, as it is
called, has a broad tinge of humor as I view
it. All this hair-splitting over doubtful read-
ings is ludicrous, if one dared say so. In the
old bard’s own manner there is very little to
set an example of carping or higgling about a
word or the turn of a phrase. He put things
forth with a direct stroke of his pen, as Turner
after him did with the brush, giving not the
slightest heed to the infinitesimals about which
the wise little commentators pretend to know
so much. A Shakespearian scholar reminds
me always of an expert in fossil bryozoans—
he is so dry and narrow, so fretful and pig-
headed when he finds a man standing before
him who dares to have a soul of his own that
he would lke to unburden. This reading,
that edition, the other commentary, some-
body’s interpolation—what’s the difference so
that I get the broad wash of thought, the in-

SHAKES* FARE. 63

comparable impressions—the kaleidoscopic
views of life and manners. What do I care
whether or no the celebrated Professor Nose-
mout has given his consent to the edition I
am reading? Nec te senserem. It is Shakes-
peare I care for, not the little man with the
eye-glasses and the many commentaries and
editions. 'To be particularly sincere, I would
not give a straw to be able to read the great
cipher of Donnelly. Life is so short and wis-
dom is.so broad.

Still, if a young person came to me asking
how to get grounded in literary wisdom I
should say: Go study Shakespeare, as you
would study Nature, not as a specialist, but
in a liberal and free way. What edition?
Any edition. Whose notes? Nobody’s. Make °
your own notes, insist upon your own inter-
pretations, then go hear some good reader
like Booth or Lawrence Barrett or Modjeska;
but at last cling to your own private opinions.
Of course these opinions will be modified
and specialized as you grow, but you must
not let them hybridize and lose the precious
elements of your own originality, least of
all must you let the lttle buzzing insects,
self-styled commentators and editors, fertilize
the fresh flowers of your mind. The pollen
they carry is nothing but shelf-dust and book-
mould; it will make your brain like an
autumn puff-ball. Go into the open air and
read your open-type copy of Shakespeare
under a tree wherein the birds sing and the
wind rustles. You will find his effects
broad, like the sky and the sea; narrow, like
the brook; tangled and fretted, like the
vine-worried groves; earthy as the earth it-
self. As plays, all these works were made
for the stage, therefore much of their stuff is

64 SYLVAN SECRETS.

mere stuff indeed, but these people are peo-
ple, these heroes are heroes, these villains
are villains, and these lovers are genuine old-
time sweet-kissing and hard-fighting ones that
it does one’s soul good to read about once
more, after some dozens of modern novels.

Since Scott no English novelist has sug-
gested a comparison with the great drama-
tist, unless we consider Bulwer at his very
best. Hugo and Goethe, barring their miser-
able egotism, are Shakespeare’s equals (at
some points, his superiors); but they lack his
equipoise, his constant suggestion ofa reserve
of power. Hugo now and again wallows and
flounders, like a whale in shallow water,
Goethe struts, scowls, smiles and laughs in
* turn, and always with the air of feeling his ©
own superiority; but Shakespeare is stead-
fast, liberal-faced, never surprised by his
own wit and never in need of extrinsic aid.

If any young writer of to-day could master
himself so as to be as self-possessed as
Shakespeare was, we might call him a thor-
ough-bred author. Vulgar fussiness and
anxiety about the fit of one’s phases is what
one can scarcely avoid in this day of clever
stylists and smart analysts; and yet this was
just what all the truly great authors of the
past really did. Read Shakespeare’s plays
and note how like the heavy blows of a la-
boring swain are the most telling of his lines.
Kven he loses when he turns back to polish a
verse or remodel a phrase. It was little
Horace, not big Homer, who set such high
value on the details of verse-making. There
are a great many little Horaces now, but
where is our grand Homer?

The study of large models cannot fail to
give some feeling of breadth, even to a small

SHAKESPEARE. 65

mind; hence the reading of Shakespeare is of
prime importance to one who dreams of mak-
ing literature some day. Not that writing
plays like Shakespeare’s ever will be profit-
able again; the good will come in what is
caught of Shakespeare’s contempt of leading-
strings and of his love of the ideal. Original-
ity in his ‘works means a Shakespearian use
of whatever came to his hand. He employed
no tricks, appealed to no mock-foam or stage-
thunder to strengthen a weak passage. Men
quarrel to-day over the question of Hamlet’s
mental condition; but Shakespeare saw no
need for any foot-note. . There are many
very weak places in his plays, but each play
makes a distinct and clear-cut impression.
It is this impression which constitutes true
value in every work of art. No mind can be
unenlightened which is full of the spirit of
Shakespeare’s works; but one may bevwne a
mere book-louse by creeping too long among
‘the words and phrases of them. Note well
the difference. If you come to the reading
of Shakespeare with the cringing soul of a
snob in you, the reading will be in vain.
Read him, just as you would read Mark
Twain, with a feeling of democratic indepen-
dence. He was no more a god than you are
a god; he was nothing but a large-headed,
open-eyed, self-reliant man who was gifted
with a talent for writing good plays. He
would not thank you for saying that the
poorest of his sonnets are better than the
best of Keats’: for he would know that you
were not sincere. Keats wrote one or two
sonnets that are incomparably better than
any of Shakespeare’s.

I say this without blinking, for Iam writ-
ing in a pine woods on the shore of the Mexi-

5

66 SYLVAN SECRETS.

can Gult, far out of any so-called Shakespear
ian scholar’s reach. Beside me lies a volume
of Alden’s Ideal Edition of the works of Wil-
liam Shakespeare, the cheapest and clearest-
typed edition I have yet seen. You may
read it as you walk; I have read it as I
walked, communing with the Two Gentlemen
of Verona under the moaning pines and
mossy live-oaks, while the lazy wash of the
Gulf waves and the lazy touch of the Gulf
breeze “filled in the symphonies between.”
Forgive me, but once in a while a mocking-
bird makes me forget that there ever was
a Shakespeare. Just a while ago I flung
down the Jdeal to run and peep at a shy
songster flitting about in a cedar thicket. I
like living things, and in spite of all that I
can do a live titmouse is more to my taste
than a dead poet. There are some wonderful
fossils, but even a mammoth’s jaw is not so
interesting as a warm, buzzing, flaming hum-
ming bird bobbing at a flower.

A vast quantity of good breath has been
wasted telling over and over and over the
threadbare romance of how incomparable are
the works of the old art-masters, a lie which
has to be kept warm by the constant friction
of telling. The romance of Shakespeare is
of the same sort; but the truth about him is
wonderful enough—the truth that makes him
a great man, like Napoleon, Newton, Phidias,
Homer, Dante and Hugo—greater in some
ways than any of these and not half as great
in other ways; a man whose glaring faults
stand out in his works, and whose rare gifts
those works do not half disclose—the truth
in short, that he was, like any other genius,
a curious bundle of greatness and common:
ness,

SHAKESPEARE. 67

When I was a boy they made me wash my
face, comb my hair and put on a broad white
collar before they would let me go to the
book-shelves and take down the old leather-
backed, heavy-ribbed book they called by the
sacred name of Shakespeare. In those days
I devoutly believed all they said about that
man’s perfectness and universality of genius.
Indeed it was with a sense of profound guilt
that one day I discovered a doubt. I had
been reading Tennyson and my head and my
heart were full of new and glorious sounds,
colors, longings, and dreams. I know to the
last pang how a Christian must feel who sud-
denly lapses into infidelity, for did I not fall
from the grace of Shakespeare-worship ? It
was a final fall, too, for I never have got
wholly back and never shall.

Still Shakespeare stands alone (so does
Shelley) and he stands alone in the highest
realm of art. Quantity as well as quality
(when the quality is always high) goes to
prove great genius. Many men have done
one act of perfect creation, falling back to
mere mediocrity afterward; but it is only the
few who can keep up the ecstasy of the
maker for many years together. We may
count these on our fingers: Homer, Milton,
Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe, Scott, and
Hugo-—the list would be short, but suchalist!
I am not quite sure that Emerson ought to be
left out, for he was one of the calm and lofty
ones who build for all time, and yet he sug-
gested rather than created the best of his ef-
fects. All these great men impress us with
the peculiar sereneness of their bearing under
the infinite white heat of poetic ecstasy.
Carlyle fell short here and hence cannot be
called great.

68 SYLVAN SECRETS.

Naturalists tell us about highly specialized
animal forms—those that have departed most
from the prototype. There is a figure here
with which great genius like Shakespeare’s
may be represented—the old, simple, univer-
sal human mind. Shakespeare was not a
specialized man, he was a specimen left over
from the ancient virile race long since wor-
shipped as gods. Walt Whitman consciously
and with great labor has tried to be such a
specimen—he has tried to stand for mankind,
but his great assumption of virility is vox et
preterea wihil save in a few splendid excep-
tions.

At last it is Shakespeare’s sincere and per-
fect love of his race, his brimming humanity,
his commanding simplicity, his courage, his
abounding sympathy, his liberality, that will
always draw men to him. We speak of per-
sonal magnetism when we mean a man’s
power to influence his fellows. This magnet-
ism of manhood exhales from all the works
of genius, and especially from those of Shakes-
peare. Walt Whitman asserts for himself in
rude and almost brutal phrasing what Shakes-
peare never claims, but always has to over-
flowing—the vigor and rugged self-sufficiency
of the primitive man. I have noticed that all
grand men assert themselves with irresistible
force but always without noise or contortion
or bluster. A steadfast eye, a calm face, a
quiet manner, an even voice. The gods turned
men to stone by a glance. The clouds and
storms are always far below the serene blue
sky in whose depth the empyrean fire steadily
. burns.

Coming to the study of Shakespeare with-
out any taint of literary snobbery, and wholly
free from mere hero-worship looking upon

SHAKESPEARE. 69

him as quite subject to criticism and quite
vulnerable to it, one should choose an edition
without notes. A glossary is well enough;
but one rarely uses it. The gist of the plays
is not to be found in the obsolete words.
Anybody can understand Shakespeare, pro-
vided the Shakespeare scholars are forbidden
admission to the study during the reading.

THE MOTIF OF BIRD-SONG.

** And some are hearing, eagerly, the wild,
Thrilling liquidity of dewy piping.’’—K«EATs.

WHatT may be called the romance of bird-
song has been the common property of poets
and enthusiastic descriptive writers of prose
from the time that the Cadmean contagion of
letters slipped into the life of man. Indeed,
ever since the old Hebrew lyrist heard the
voice of the turtle in his land, there has been
a human echo to every trill and warble flung
out of bush and bough all round the verna\
circle of the earth. It has been well said by
une of our ablest ornithologists, Dr. Uoues,
vnat man and bird are the two animals that
sing and enjoy song. This love of sweet
sounds has formed between these widely dif-
ferent and extremely specialized beings a
golden cord of sympathy, which has been
kept sweetly vibrating for ages with inter-
change of melodious mouthings.

I have often thought that it would be a
most welcome book, if some competent per-
son should construct a carefully arranged
anthology of the bird-lyrics worthy of note
written in English since the days of Chaucer;
or better still, of all the best bird-songs of
every language from the beginning of time.
Such a work would disclose a singular and
beautiful phase of human history—a phase
from which the literary student might gather
rich treasure, and out of which the scientist
might distil the essence of precious truths.

70

MOTIF OF BIRD SONG. 21

Doubtless there is a cause, deep set in the
mystery of life, from which arises in accord-
ance with some natural law, the instinctive
interchange of affection between man and the
song-birds. I say instinctive because I am
not convinced that reason has anything to do
with the matter. A man may be an ardent
admirer of birds, and yet be an enthusiastic
sportsman—ready to kill them for mere
amusement, in which he is as irrational as is
the jay that would pluck out the eyes of him
who feeds it in the dead of winter, provided
it chanced to imagine the eyes -to be as lus-
cious as the berries of the brier.

There is an inpulse—a law—other than the
instinctive movement toward food and pro-
tection, which causes the song-bird to get
close to man. I could gather many facts to-
gether in proof of this. Indeed, all the lower
animals are capable of loving man, and many
of them have often and voluntarily sought to
show such affection.

Mr. Huxley, in accordance with the infer-
ence enforced by a great number of anatomi-
cal facts, has grouped the birds and reptiles
together under the name sawropsida; and it
has come to be pretty generally admitted
among scientists that, whether the avian race
has or has not actually descended from a
reptilian ancestor, there is certainly a like-
ness existing which justifies the inference of
such an origin, especially in the absence of
any tenable theory to the contrary based on
scientific reasoning. In this connection it is
a striking fact that no mammal, of its own
accord, ever has sought the companionship of
man as freely and sincerely, so to speak, as
many of the birds and some of the reptiles
have. I have seen toads, lizards, and even

42 SYLVAN SECRETS.

snakes exhibit great satisfaction in finding a
cosey nook for themselves in human habita-
tions. I once had a toad friend who fattened
to enormous size at my expense, and I had
ample opportunity to note the growth (quite
apace with his corporeal expansion) of his af-
fection forme. He sought my acquaintance
and cultivated my friendship of his own mo-
tion, evidently taking it for granted that I
could not fail to feel highly honored by his
attentions. Birds have made their love for
man so well known that I need offer no in-
stances. A few words in the way of sugges-
tion, however, may not be amiss, with a view
to leading up to a consideration of the origin of
the song-impulse in birds. Genuine song, or,
rather, music-making, is within the power of
comparatively few of the avian family; but
we may consider such birds as the meadow-
lark, the bluebird, and the blue-jay, that can
utter a bar of two or three sweet notes, song-
birds for all the purposes we have in view,
and from these lowly and slightly gifted ones
we may pass up along the line to such musical
prodigies as the nightingale and the mocking-
bird.

Pious minds, influenced by the charm of
spring, long ago came to the conclusion that
song-birds were ecstatic worshippers of Deity,
and that all their pipings were conscious
praise-offerings. At the other extreme, the
scientists have referred bird-song to erotic
impulses when in the spring the wild-bird’s
fancy

‘‘ Lightly turns to thoughts of love.”

What shall we say of the caged bird that
sings in a broken and sketchy way the whole
year round? Does captivity engender per-

MOTIF OF BIRD SONG. 3

ennial piety? or does it make the tender pas-
sion unquenchably and constantly burn? I
have heard the crested titmouse utter its
slight song-sketch in mid-January on parallel
40° north when the thermometer indicated a
heavy dip below zero, On the other hand, I
have known fine male mocking-birds that re-
fused to sing for two weeks together in the
most golden period of a southern spring-time,
when the felicity of the mating and nesting
experience was at its highest height. I have
watched a lonely blue-jay, a mile removed
from his mate, sit on a bough and, with a
peculiar rhythmic. motion of the body, give
forth a low, wheedling strain which could not
be heard more than ten or twenty yards
away. The indigo-bird has a very sweet,
twittering song, which is scarely loud enough
to be distinguished two rods from where he
sits, and yet he will pour it forth ecstatically
in the midst of a prairie, with none of his spe-
cies within the horizon. I have heard the
meadow-lark and the bluebird pipe their
dreamy scores in every month of the year,
regardless of the season of love. The cardinal
grossbeak does not wait for the time

““Whan that Aprille with her showres swoote
The drought of March hath pierced to the roote,”

in order to begin his loud and cheery fluting
in the thickets, but will act as if December
were

‘fas pleasant as May.”

Still, the larger fact is that spring is the
season when the volume of bird-song poured
round the world is incomparably stronger,
fuller, and sweeter than at any other; and
that, too, is the season of mating and of nest-

wd SYLVAN SECRETS.

ing. Our finest songsters, notable the mock:
ing-bird, the cat-bird, and the brown thrush,
rarely ‘‘ tune their throats ” before the earliest
wild-flowers bloom. I have noticed that on
the coast of the Gulf of Mexico the first song
of the mocking-bird is a pretty safe announce-
ment of the blowing of the pitcher-plant and
the little white daisy in the sandy bogs of the
pineries. And the further fact that these
plants and the mocking-bird’s voice vary in
their coming between extremes reaching from
the 10th of February to the 15th of March,
according to the season, is significant of some
fine sympathetic relationship between the
vernal impulse and that of the bird’s song. I
was of the opinion until quite recently that
the bird’s vocal organs underwent a change,
just before the mating season, which specially
fitted them for melodious utterances; but
many dissections have proved the contrary.
There is no appreciable organic change in the
syrinx, larynx, tongue, or mouth of the mock-
ing-bird, the brown thrush, or the cat-bird, in
the spring.

Nearly all the most charming of the singing-
birds prefer the early morning and the even-
ing twilight for their vocal performances,
though some of them sing far in the night.
The matin-song of our American robin will
convince any one who observes closely that
the witchery of the dewy, fragrant day-dawn
is the bird’s inspiration, and no person who
has heard the mocking-bird’s dreamy night-
lay can doubt that it isa fine expression of
the nocturnal influence. The Baltimore ori-
ole comes to our Northern States in May, and
he comes as if floating down the tide of his
own rather monotonously sweet song. Fora
time he sings from dawn till dark, in a fitful,

MOTIF OF BIRD SONG. 5

wandering way, as he flits about all alone.
His notes have anabsent-minded ring, as if in
his diligence in food-hunting he were forget-
ting to put expression into hislay. Indeed, all
our birds use what we call their voices, just
as we use ours, for the purposes of expression
generally, and I am convinced that bird-song
proper, though oftenest the expression of
some phase of the tender passion, is not con-
fined to such expression. Ina limited way
birds have their lyric and their dramatic
moods, their serious and their comic songs,

their recitative and their oratorical methods.

They areconscious of any especial superiority

of voice, just as they are keenly aware of any °
particular brilliancy of colors on their plum

age. It may be noticed, in passing, that here
i. aim the birds and reptiles agree (many of
the latter giving evidence of a taste for
bright colors), while below man no other ani-
mals show much more than mere curiosity in
this regard. A parrot having gay feathers in
its wings and tail will display them to please
your eye in return for the favor of a nut ora
cracker, without ever having been taught to
doit. It isconscious of the fact that brilliant
colors are acceptable to the eye, and it in-

stinctively seeks to thank you, so to say, by
the delicate strut which uncovers all its hid-
den wealth of red, yellow, and blue. So the
sweetest sounds at its command are instinc-
tively flung out by the song-bird whenever it
feels especially happy. The migratory song-
birds, upon their spring arrival, are (no doubt)
delighted at finding themselves once more in
their breeding haunts, and immediately they
begin to give free vent to their feelings through
their melodious throats. It would be interest-
ing. to know whether or not they do the same

76 SYLVAN SECRETS.

at the extreme southern end of their migra-
tion. I have noted that along the gulf-coast
of Mississippi and Louisiana the non-resident
mocking-birds, when they first come in from
farther south, are noisily communicative of
their ecstatic pleasure. For afew days they
make the groves ring with their songs, then
pass on farther north, many of them finally
reaching Tennessee, some going over the
mountains to Kentucky, and a few touching
with a light spray of melody the southern-
most knobs of Ohio and Indiana. I might
easily mass a large sum of facts going to show
that no one desire or instinctive emotion is
the sole cause of bird-song. That the tender
passion engenders lyrical fervor and makes a
feathered troubadour of the gay sylvan lover
there can be no doubt, but love is not always
at the root of the lay. The song-bird is a
gourmand of the most pronounced type, and
we find him going into a rapture of sweet
sounds over a feast of insects or fruit. He
enjoys bright colors, too, so that he is always
hilarious when he finds himself in the midst
of green leaves and beautiful bloom-sprays.
A haw-bush or wild apple-tree in full flower
often is the inspiration of the brown thrush
and the cat-bird. In acertain way, indeed,
the birds are true poets, singing forth the in-
fluence of their environments—just as Burns
sang his, just as Millet painted his. I do not
mean to be fanciful in this regard. Call it in-
stinct, as it is, and say that birds do not
reason, which is true; but add, nevertheless,
the indisputable fact that instinct is of kin to
genius, in that it has its origin (as genius has
its) in the simplest and purest elements of
nature, and so you will get my meaning.

It is impossible to know, with any degree

MOTIF OF BIRD SONG. why

of certainty, how clear or how dim may be
the bird’s conception of melody or of beauty ;
but we can know that its enjoyment of color
and sweet sounds is most intense. The wood-
pecker, beating his unique call on a bit of
hard, elastic wood, is making an effort, blind
and crude enough, but still an effort, to ex-
press a musical mood vaguely floating in his
nature. We may not laugh at him, so long
as from the interior of Africa explorers bring
forth the hideous caricatures of musical in-
struments that some tribes of our own genus
delight themselves withal. Among the South-
ern negroes it was once common to see a
dancer going through an intricate terpsicho-
rean score to the music of a ‘“‘ pat,” which
was a rhythmical hand-clapping performed
by acompanion. I mention this in connection
with the suggestion that the chief difference
between the highest order of bird-music and
the lowest order of man-music is expressed
by the word rhythm. There is no such an el-
ement as the rhythmic beat in any bird-song
that I have heard. Modulation and fine
shades of ‘‘ color,” as the musical critic has
it, together with melodious phrasing, take the
place of rhythm. The meadow-lark, in its
mellow fluting, comes very near to a measure
of two rhythmic beats, and the mourning
dove puts a throbbing cadence into its plaint;
but the accent which the human ear demands
is wholly wanting in each case. On the other
hand, the mocking-bird, the cat-bird, and the
brown thrush accentuate their songs, but not
rhythmically; indeed, the cat-bird’s utter-
ance is an impetuous stream of glittering ac-
cents, as it were—irregular, tricksy, flippant,
and yet as symmetrical, in a certain sense, as
the bird itself—and the mocking-bird’s song

78 SYLVAN SECRETS.

is like a flashing stream of water flowing over
stones in the sunlight and flinging ariose bub-
bles and tinkling spray in every direction.
I have watched birds at their singing under
many and widely differing circumstances,
and I am sure that they express joyous antic-
ipation, present content and pleasant recol-
lection, each as the mood moves, and all with
equal ease. Itis not so plain, however, that
the avian nature is fitted to formulate hate,
or sorrow, or anger in song, for any unpleas-
ant mood seems to take expression in cries
altogether unmusical. I have never heard
one sweet note by any angry or, in any way,
unhappy bird. The avian life is beset with
every danger except, probably, that of epi-
demic disease, and yet so flexible and elastic
is it that the moment any terrible ordeal is
past the bird is quite ready for a new and en-
ergetic effort in song-singing.

It may not be out of the way to say, in pa-
rentheses, here, that the practice of studying
domesticated or semi-domesticated birds, with
a view to applying the results to forming a
theory of wild-bird life, is by no means a safe
one. Domestication deprives birds of their
proper food, and tends to shorten their lives
and to disintegrate their characters. A mock-
ing-bird reared in captivity is very interest-
ing, and it may sing loudly and well, but it
is not to be compared with the free wild-bird
that sings in a Southern grove, with its mate
demurely hovering near. Domestication in-
duces departure from fixed habit, and in the
highly specialized song-bird fixed habit is de-
veloped to almost the last degree; in fact, is
not the highest type of bird the completest
animal, in point of physical equipoise and fit-
ness for indefinite prolongation of individual

MOTIF OF BIRD SONG. "19

life, that the earth holds, man not excepted ?
I do not undertake to answer my interroga-
tory directly; but to me it is significant in
this connection that of all the hundreds—nay,
thousands—of wild-birds that I have killed,
and have seen killed, and of all that I have
dissected for one purpose or other, I have
never found one that was diseased, so far as
I could discover, save from wounds, unless
the presence of intestinal worms in a perfectly
strong and ‘healthy appearing subject may
have indicated disease. I have dissected and
minutely examined the mouth, throat, larynx,
syrinx, and lungs of a great number of song
birds, and in every case those organs have
been in a perfectly normal and healthy state,
so far as I could by any means discover.
Among human beings a fine voice is the
notable exception; among male mocking-
birds in a wild state there is no exception—
they all sing, and so nearly equally well that
it requires close attention to discover any dif-
ference. So one wild bluebird’s piping is
practically identical, in volume, compass, and
timbre, with that of every other wild male
bluebird in the world. From this and a hun-
dred kindred facts, it is safe to say that gene-
ration and the constant transmission of or-
ganic power and equipoise are very nearly
perfect with birds of the highest order. In-
deed, in song, as in so many other ways, the
bird shows the operation of a nearly unerring
heredity, and I have been forced to conclude,
from all that I have been able to note in the —
lives and habits of song-birds, that a good
part of bird-song is the mechanical response
to what may be called hereditary memory.
The mocking-bird, reared in captivity, far
from the haunts of its ancestors, will repeat

80 SYLVAN SECRETS.

the cries of birds it has never seen and whose
voices it has never heard. I have heard it do
this. Not only the power to mimic is heredi-
tary, but there, lingering in the bird’s nature,
is the memory, so to call it, of the voices it is
born to mimic—the voices its ancestors mim-
icked ten thousand years ago.

It has been the fashion for men of science
to make light of the common legend of the
power of birds and other animals to foretell
rain and other meteorological Phenomena;
but I long ago learned to credit it in a large
degree. Birds are not always right in their
predictions, because weather-threats are not
always carried out. The yellow-billed cuckoo
is more vociferous when the barometer indi-
cates rain, but often the barometer fails
to fetch the shower. The tree-frog, another
sort of song-bird, squeals and chirps at the
first indication of a rain-atmosphere, but the
rain may fail to come. Birds sing with em-
phasis after a shower, as if they felt as much
refreshed as the violets, and the clover, and
the maple-leaves, and no doubt they do thus
express some sense of delight in their revivi-
fied surroundings, just as they have sung or
cackled in pleasant anticipation of the same
before it came.

I have seen a mocking-bird eat the best
part of a luscious pear or apricot, and then
leap to the topmost spray of the tree and sing
as if it would trill itself into fragments for
very joy of the feast. The shrike cannot
sing, but after impaling a grasshopper ona
thorn he will make a hideous effort to be
melodious over the deed. So the bluejay will
utter its softest and sweetest ‘‘ oodle-doo, oo-
dle-doo,” as soon as it has wiped its bill clear
of the blood-stain received in murdering a

_MOTIF OF BIRD SONG. 81

nest-full of young Sparrows. Even the belted
king-fisher cackles gleefully every time he
swallows a minnow, as the barn-yard hen
does when she has laid an egg.

Buffon, in his charming sketch of the
mocking-bird, written over a hundred years
ago, graphically describes its dramatic pow-
ers and the feeling it exhibits while singing:
‘Tt thrills to its own voice, and accompanies
it with measured movements that are always
suited to the inexhaustible variety of its
phrases, natural and acquired. Its usual
prelude is to lift itself at first little by little,
its wings outspread, then to fall, head down-
ward, to its place again; and, after going
through this bizarre exercise for some time,
it begins its time-keeping movements, or, if
you please, its dance, according with the
different parts of its song. If it utters bright
and airy warblings, its wings at the same
time describe a multitude of circles that cross
themselves in the air; one sees it thread the
ins and outs of a tortuous line, through which
it ceaselessly ascends and descends. If its
throat flings out a brilliant and sharply
quavered cadence, it accompanies it with
wing-strokes equally lively and smart.” I
suppose that Buffon described all this from
hearsay, but it is quite as accurate as any-
thing else I have found in his works. Asa
matter of fact, many of our song-birds are
consummate actors, within narrow limits,
and have a command of gesture that any
opera-star might well covet. The compari-
son between the mocking-bird and any other
oscine species must be cut short, however,
when it comes to the dénouement—the final
outcome of the song—for it is here that our
American nightingale is incomparable. In

6

82 SYLVAN SECRETS.

speaking of this, Buffon says: ‘‘When it
gives full freedom to its voice in bursts
. wherein the sounds are at first full and _ bril-
liant, then softening down by degrees, and
finally dying out and losing themselves alto-
gether in a silence as charming as the rarest
melody, then it is that one sees it hover
gently above its perch, slowly slackening the
motion of its wings, and resting quiet at last,
as if suspended in mid-air.” But I have seen
it go far beyond even this extraordinary per-
‘formance, and slowly fall to the ground,
panting, and apparently exhausted from the
effect of its ecstatic climax of exertion. Dur-
ing many visits to the coast of the Gulf of
Mexico in the spring, I have availed myself
of ample opportunity to study this Shakes-
peare of the birds, and I have concluded,
from what I think sufficient proof, that the
mocking-bird sings, consciously at times,
for the purpose of gaining the favor of man.
One thing is easily noted: Its song, sung close
to human habitations—in the vines and or-
chards and gardens of man’s planting—is not
the same song it sings in the wild depths of
the Southern woods. I was so struck with
this that I put it to the test in every way I
could, and I got so familiar with the differ-
ence that, while wandering in the lonely
forests, I could know when I was nearing a
settler’s clearing or a negro’s cabin by the
peculiar notes of the mocking-birds. All
along the charming gulf-coast from Mobile to
Bay St. Louis, or, in the other direction, to St.
Mark’s and Tallahassee, there is not a cot, no
matter how lonely or lowly, provided it has
a fig-tree, that there is nota pair of mocking-
birds to do it honor. The Scuppernong
vineyards, too, are the coneert-halls of this

MOTIF OF BIRD SONG. 83

famous singer. Near the home of Mr. Jeffer-
son Davis, and, I believe, upon the estate of
the ex-Confederate chieftain, I sat in the
shade of a water-oak and heard a mocking-
bird sing, over in a thrifty vineyard, the rare
dropping-song of which naturalists appear to
have taken no notice. It wasa balmy day in
March; the sky, the gulf, the air all hazy
and shimmering, the whole world swimming
in a purplish mist of dreams, and I felt that
the song was the expression of some such
sweet passionate longing as exhales from
Keats’ ‘‘Ode to a Nightingale.” Under the
low-hanging boughs, and over the level,
daisy-sprinkled ground, I gazed upon the
sheeny reach of water, half convinced that I
was looking through

‘““Magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn,”

and the very tones of the bird’s voice ac-
corded with the feeling in which the day was
steeped. |

Genuine bird-song is simply the highest
form of avian vocalization, by which instinc-
tively, if not premeditatedly, the bird finds
expression of pleasure. The absence of true
rhythm probably is significant of a want of
power to appreciate genuine music, the bird’s
comprehension compassing no more than the
value of sweet sounds merely as such.

As to the origin‘of bird-song, it has come,
it seems to me, in response to a growth of the
natural desire for a means of expression.
Language is the highest mode of expression,
and bird-song is a beautiful and witching,
but very imperfect, language. In this con-
nection it is a striking fact that all the most
gifted avian singers are small. The nightin-

84 SYLVAN SECRETS.

gale and the mocking-bird are insignificant
physically, when compared with the ostrich,
the condor, and the crane. The entire skull
of the mocking-bird is no larger than the end
of one’s thumb, and its brain will weigh
about one-quarter of an ounce. No great
scope of intelligence could be expected in
such a case; but we must admit that, in a
slender way, this brain is amazingly devel-
oped and balanced, and that, compared with
man’s, it is proportionately the more power-
ful and under far better control. If a quar-
ter-ounce brain can shape a bird-voice so as
to captivate the imagination of man through-
out the ages, what ought a brain of ninety-
two cubic inches do with an equal opportu-
nity ? Like the musician of old, it should set
the very trees to dancing.

THE GENESIS OF BIRD-SONG.

BirRD-SONG is one of the most charming
mysteries in nature; it has no counter-
part in art. I have at times fancied there
' was some analogy between it and the art of
poetry, but there is none, infact. The genesis
of poetry is intellectual and psychal; the
genesis of bird-song is purely physical. Even
the human voice, in song, oratory, and his-
trionic declamation, borrows much of its best
value from the character, mental and psychal,
of the individual vocalizer.

The song apparatus of the bird is, perhaps,
no more a machine than that of the man;
but the controlling force, the motor, of the
former is mechanical, whilst that of the latter
is intellectual to a large degree. Of course I
do not mean to say that birds sing involun-
tarily or without emotion of a certain sort,
nor would I be understood as representing
the song organ of any oscine to be absolutely
unadjustable, which would be contrary to
the first law of evolution,—the natural im-
pulse of progression from lower to higher
expression. It would seem that conscious
effort to improve, such as man is capable of,
works both evil and good in the way of devel.
oping the vocal organs, whilst the uncon-
scious practice indulged by the birds never
injures the voice, and if it improves it, the
result comes about by the slow process of
hereditary accumulation. Thus, no doubt,
the wonderful voice power of our song-birds

85

86 SYLVAN SECRETS.

is the result of a long, steady evolutionary
growth.

The theory that birds have descended from
a remote reptilian ancestry has so many facts
to support it that, until some convincing dis-
coveries in paleontology shall be made to
the contrary tending, we must accept it as
probably true. Unfortunately, the study of
comparative anatomy is both infinitely com.
plicated and immeasurably dry to the lay-
man, as contradistinguished from _ the
scientist, wherefore much the greater num-
ber of even cultured people will probably al.
Ways rest in ignorance of the startling
details pertaining to evolution in nature.
Few of us, indeed, have the time and the
necessary self-devotion, even if the scarce
and precious materia] furnished by nature
were always at hand, to make the investiga-
tions necessary to a high knowledge of nat-
ural science. Large museums are far apart,
scientific books are expensive, and the field of
each science is as wide as the whole range of
nature: consequently, none but the favored—
or the self-devoted—few can afford the luxury
of following, as Darwin and Huxley and
Milne-Edwards and Owen and Marsh have
done, the flitting spirit which beckons us
back and back, over the silent, desolate
grave-yards of the ages, to the beginnings of
things. Still, wemay all catcha light breath,
so to speak, of the air from the oldest, or
rather the youngest, period of organic life.
Any one of us may choose a slight, narrow,
but far-reaching current of inquiry, and float
down it, from time to time, until at last the
end is reached, away back in the chaos upon
which moved the Spirit of Creation at the
dawn of day.

GENESIS OF BIRD SONG. gy

Some years ago Iwas tramping and sketch-
ing in the beautiful hilly region of Western
Florida. During the spring-time, especially,
Ispent a great deal of my leisure studying
the song and habits of the mocking-bird. One
morning, while a fine moquer, as the Creoles
call our king of song-birds, was charming me
with his wonderful vocalization, the question
arose in my mind: When did a mocking-bird
first sing ? Of course the inquiry could not
be answered; but it suggested a broad field of
special research. Why not ask of Nature
the general question, When did birds first
sing ? or: What is the genesis of bird-song ?
I lay in the shade of a wide-topped live-oak
and brooded over the fascinating problem,
while a sweet breeze from the Gulf stirred
the sprays overhead, and rippled the silvery
bosom of a little lake that lapped the sand at
my feet. Gradually enough I formulated a
plan of investigation which I have followed,
as far as my ability to profit by my own dis-
coveries and those of others has permitted.

At first thought it may seem trivial to pro-
pose an inquiry into the origin of bird-song;
but a little reflection upon the subject will be
sufficient to enlist the interest of almost any
mind. All things have had a beginning, and
so there was a time when no music of
‘swelling throats” filled the air of spring.
Somewhere the first cat-bird sang in a brier-
tangle, the first brown thrush flooded a
thicket with its melody, the first mocking-
bird filled the day and night with incompar-
able rhapsody ; at least one imagines as much,
and then the Garden of Eden appears in the
distance, some six or seven thousand years
away. There it was that birds and bird-song
had their beginning, just in time to welcome

88 SYLVAN SECRETS.

Adam and give Eve a brilliant wedding
serenade.

Now I believe that, when they are read
aright, science and revelation, so far as they
pertain to material things, are mathemati-
cally equivalent to each other; they coincide
in meaning, if not inform. They might be
exactly superposable, were science reduced to
the simplicity of revelation, that is to simple
truth; but unfortunately we cannot begin at
the beginning or go to the end of science.
Revelation states a fact, whilst science merely
collects evidence tending to establish a fact.
Revelation emits simple truth; science strives
to reach this same elementary verity by a
process of reconstruction.

The inspired record declares that man was
given dominion, which would imply that the
earth and all things upon it and in it were
made for his benefit. Science may profit by
this view of creation, and take the serving of
man’s physical and mental needs as the end
of evolution. In other words, we may as-
sume that if the object of creation was to
make asphere for man’s dominion while in
the human state, then all the lines of creature
development have been drawn towards a
culmination, have been led to their highest
point, in the age of man’s creation; that the
Creator perfected the animal, mineral, and
vegetable kingdoms before he made man.
But what has all this to do with the genesis
of bird-song ? you will ask. Perhaps much,
perhaps little. Let us see.

Without resorting to the language of tech-
nical scientific literature, where it can be
avoided, I will briefly review the records of
geology touching the origin of birds, and by

GENESIS OF BIRD-SONG. 89

this means we may get a clew to the origin of
bird-song.

The first traces in the paleozoic rocks of
anything resembling bird life are well-defined
footprints; these, however, have been at-
- tributed to certain ancient reptiles having
feet approaching those of some aquatic fowls
in form. Next come organic remains—frag-
mentary skeletons, for the most part, of
strange saurians and bat-like flying animals,
having membranous wings and the beak
of a toothed bird. No sign of a feather was
observable, however, among all the fossil
records, up to the discovery of an imperfect
skeleton and partial cast of a strange creature
named Archeopteryx, half bird, half reptile,
in the lithographic slate of Solenhofen,
Bavaria. A transition state between the bat-
like, bird-billed reptiles above noted and our
present ornithic forms could not be better ex-
pressed than by Archzeopteryx, so far as
anatomy and exterior structural points are
concerned. This initial bird, so to call it, ap-
pears to have possessed a very oddly arranged
suit of feathers, consisting of retrices (ar-
ranged regularly on the sides of a very long,
twenty-jointed tail) and wing-feathers, its
body having no plumage, probably, or at
best mere rudimentary, down-like feathers.
As to whether this rude bird had a voice, it
is useless to inquire, since the head and ster-
num are wanting; but I think we may safely
doubt the existence of more than the ob-
scurest development of vocal organs in birds
having toothed reptile jaws and by-concave
vertebre, as in the case of some of the Odon-
tornithes, so ably studied and arranged by
Professor Marsh. The fish-eating birds of
our own time have not much voice, as a rule,

90 SYLVAN SECRETS.

—a guttural squawk, or a metallic clanging
scream, being the extent of their performance.
Taking the skeleton of Hesperornis regalis,
as restored by Marsh, we shall see at once,
considering the toothed jaws and reptilian
throat, that its vocal organs were probably-
far inferior to those of existing loons and
grebes, if it had a voice at all.

Returning to Archeeopteryx, we shall be-
come more and more convinced, the more we
study its remains in the light of all that is
known of comparative anatomy, that it was
scarcely more ornithic than our common bat,
as regards similarity io the birds of to-day,
notwithstanding its feathers. Indeed, it had
a sort of bat claw at the end of the wing, and
its wing feathers and retrices were a very lit-
tle remove from the leathery, bat vans of the
flying reptiles in so far as efficiency was con-
cerned; but its impression in the rocks regis-
ters a definite effort of nature in the direction
of evolving a true bird. Thenceforward we
may look for feathered forms gradually
growing toward the high type of to-day. The
reptile prototype has somehow exchanged his
scales for feathers; the generation of the true
bird has begun with Archeopteryx. A long,
dreary blank here appears in the record of the
rocks, after which we find the toothed birds
of Professor Marsh, probably full-fledged,
in the sense of being coated with feathers. It
is to be doubted whether any of these were
good flyers,—some of them certainly could
not fly at all,—though they were mostly ex-
cellent swimmers, and possibly capable of liv-
ing a long time under water, if not really am-
phibious. What Professor Marsh says of the
anatomy of Archzopteryx may be applied
generally to the toothed birds: ‘‘ The bones

GENESIS OF BIRD-SONG. 91

of the reptile are indeed there, but they have
already received the stamp of the bird:” and
Imay add that, as regards Odontornithes
collectively, the feathers are indeed there,
and the stamp of the bird, but the old reptile
character is still present, scarcely more than
dominated by the ornithic features. I have
said that it may be doubted whether any of
the Odontornithes were good flyers. By good
flyers I mean not merely strong flyers (like
the teals), nor sailers (like the hawks and
buzzards), but flyers whose movements in
the air are almost instantaneous, like the
highest type of oscines, say the mocking-bird,
or. the cardinal grossbeak, a facility of flight
absolutely necessary to arboreal life, where
so many thorns, spikes, branches, twigs, vines,
and sprays have to be suddenly avoided in
the midst of the swiftest motion. Some of the
toothed birds of Marsh’s smaller group may
have been as good flyers as our gulls, strong
and tireless; but they could not dodge a dozen
twigs in a second, as I have seen a sparrow
do in full flight.

The discovery of Palcwospiza bella, a well-
preserved, almost complete skeleton of a spar-
row-like bird in the insectivorous shale of
Colorado, has given us the nearest approach
to a song-bird yet found in the old rocks; but
the billislacking. Most probably Paleeospiza
was an oscine, in the ornithological sense, but
I think we may well doubt whether it could
sing, in the true meaning of the word. Its
position in the insect-bearing shale further
favors our classing it as insectivorous, an-
other characteristic of the true song-birds;
but this would not give it a song, for many
of the existing oscines have no song to sing,
chirp and pipe and squeak as they may.

92 SYLVAN SECRETS.

From this slight sketch of what the old
rocks tell about birds, we see that, so far as
fossil remains teach anything, they teach us
that the oscine form was the last to appear in
the succession of structural changes in the
bird’s general physique. This is as far as we
can go in the direction of mere development
of form, by the light of anatomy, conaion
fossil skeletons merely as such.

Let us turn «*w and take a quick glance
over the evidenc. of voice development dis-
coverable in the kinship between birds and
reptiles.

Professor Huxley, in one of the most ad-
mirable of his great contributions to scien-
tific taxonomy, has classed the birds and the
reptiles together, or rather grouped them un-
der one head, as constituting’a primary divi-
sion of the vertebrates. He has based this
classification on many points in which, on one
hand, birds and reptiles agree anatomically
and physiologically, and on their variance
from mammals in as many points on the
other hand. Indeed, the kinship between
birds and reptiles is still very strong, even af-
ter the immense development of the bird form
and the comparatively slight modification of
most reptile forms which have come about
since the time of Archzeopteryx and the dino-
saurian animals of the triassic rocks.

We may assume, then, that the develop-
ment of the vocal organs in birds has been, in
some measure, apace with or dependent upon
the departure of the bird form from that of
the reptile.

Our present existing reptiles are almost de-
void of voice proper. Some of them can make
certain dismal, guttural groans or croaks,
others can utter shrill, discordant sounds;

GENESIS OF BIRD-SONG. 93

but at best the reptilian vocal apparatus is
rudimentary in the extreme. Hence in those
days when the bird was just struggling away
from the clumsiest and worst hindering char-
acteristics of the reptile, it certainly possessed
no vocal organs of any great power. It would
appear doubtful whether it had any at all,
since so few birds, even now, have a singing
voice, and since, after all these ages of devel-
opment, the reptile’s voice is scarcely a voice
at best. It is a curious fact that frogs and
toads, amphibians, have the best developed vo-
cal organs ofall the reptiles, and that they are
not properly scale-bearing; and yet it is from
the scale-bearing reptiles that our birds have
sprung. Perhaps the common toad comes
nearer than any known reptile to the posses-
sion of a singing voice, though the tree-frogs
have a peculiar chirp or squeak not unlike
certain notes of the woodpeckers. One might
stop here and indulge the pretty impression
that the toad in the summer grass and the
tree-frog among the green branches register
the highest possibilities of reptilian song
genius, whilst the mocking-bird, the brown
thrush, and the nightingale assert the tri-
umph of the race which long ago departed
from the groove of that lower estate, by
changing scales to feathers, legs to wings, and
that rudimentary vocal apparatus into the
syrinx, with which to charm the poets of all
time!

The crocodiles, including our alligator, have
the tongue attached all round in the mouth,
so that it cannot be much used, and it is at
this point, so far as the power of vocalization
is concerned, that song-birds have departed
farthest from the scale-bearing reptiles; for
the tongues of our musical oscines are thor-

94 SYLVAN SECRETS.

oughly liberated, and do good service in the
complicated gymnastics of song production.
The tongue of the frog is, as a rule, attached
at the front of the mouth and free behind, so
that, in catching insects, this organ is ‘‘ curled
over itself,” and thrust out rear end foremost.
Curiously enough, the ‘‘ singing ” tree-frogs
are the males, the females not possessing the
vocal power to any great degree; thus resem-
bling our oscines, whose males are the music-
makers. Moreover, the frog, as a fossil, dates
back to the’ time when the birds were fairly
beginning to separate themselves from reptile
life. Add to this the fact that there is a flying
tree-frog in Borneo, and it will be seen that
here is a strange, belated effort of nature to
urge the scaleless reptiles up to arboreal,
aerial, and song-singing life, by the side of
their more fortunate avian kinsmen, who
early chose a better method of develop-
ment!

Turning now to rapidly sketch -.the really
wonderful vocal organs of our oscine birds,
I need not enter into any technical anatomi-
cal discussion, but, taking the mocking-bird
as the highest type of singer, it will be suffi-
cient, for the purposes of this paper, to ex-
plain the salient features of the song-produc-
ing throat in birds. First, then, all bird-song
is generated in a lower larynx called the
syrinx, a complicated little machine situated,
in fact, at the lower end of the trachea,
where it divides into two bronchial tubes,
and consisting in chief of an enlargement and
rearrangement of the compound lower ring
of the windpipe, a bony cross-bar, or pessulus,
and a membranous plate which forms a par-
tition between the tubes, and whose upper
margin is one of the vibrating vocal cords,

GENESIS OF BIRD-SONG. 95

the other cord being a membrane developed
on the inside of the bronchial rings, or rather
half-rings, opposite the septum or partition
above mentioned. Thus a column of air
passing from the lungs to escape through the
trachea sets these membranes to vibrating,
whilst by means of five or six pairs of deli-
cately adjusted muscles the air space is
changed with wonderful facility, the column
shortened or lengthened, as is done by the
flute-player, and indeed the whole lower
throat becomes a generator of sweet sounds,
which, passing up to the bird’s mouth, are
broken into melodious bits, so to speak, and
scattered to the winds; for the highest vo-
calization, although generated in the syrinx,
is made into song, in a large degree, by the
bird’s tongue, its posterior mouth walls, and
the upper extremity of the trachea, all of
which taken together constitute a compli-
cated and perfectly adjusted governor of the
quantity, the accent, and, in a measure, the
quality of the notes.

Every observer has remarked that nearly
all the superior songsters among birds have
rather long and slender bills, whilst the talk-
ers have short, stout ones. I have tried to
discover, and think I have discovered, the
relation that width, length, and curvature of
bill have to the quality or style of voice. It
is sufficient to remark here that birds having
extremely short, thick beaks, like that of the
cardinal grossbeak or that of the blue-jay,
have not the power, apparently, of trilling,
shaking, or quavering the voice (which is the
distinguishing gift of the thrush and many
other slender-billed birds), though the gross-
beak and the jay have excellent vocal pow-
ers. Reduced toa rule, the comparison will

96 SYLVAN SECRETS.

be, The short-bills twitter and whistle, the
long-bills sing. The blue-jay is the most
melodious of the whistlers, whilst the quail
(bob-white) and the cardinal grossbeak are
the most powerful whistlers of all our birds.
It has been somewhat taken for granted by
our ornithologists that all the birds belong-
ing to the subdivision named oscines, or sing-
ers, have the vocal organs necessary to song.
Even Dr. Coues remarks that the rook,
though ‘‘a corvine croaker,” has a ‘‘syrinx
in good order, though he has never learned
to play’ on it. Now, I have never had the
opportunity of dissecting a rook’s vocal or-
gans; but Iam able to say that such corvine
croakers as I have examined are not pos-
sessed of a song-making apparatus to be at
all compared with that of the cat-bird, the
brown thrush, or the mocking-bird. Macgil
livray’s figures will have to be greatly mod-
ified when applied to the best of our Ameri-
can songsters. Professor Muller’s researches
in the comparative anatomy of vocal organs
in birds, and Professor Huxley’s admirably
clear description, have failed fully to recog-
nize the office of the tongue and posterior
walls of the mouth in differentiating and
modifying the notes of a bird’s song. It ap-
pears to me that the oversight, or partial
oversight, has arisen from taking it for
granted that the bronchi-tracheal syrinx is
the absolute and sole song organ in birds, in-
stead of being merely the voice generator in
song-birds. For example, the parrot has no
septum in his syrinx, and but three pairs of
intrinsic muscles, and yet his voice is a won-
der of flexibility and elasticity. Melody is
lacking, because one of the vocal cords (the
septum with its membrane) is gone; but high

GENESIS OF BIRD-SONG. 9”

vocal performance is possible, because the
lower mouth space and the tongue are singu-
larly adapted to modifying and breaking up
the voice into fragments surprisingly articu-
late, though the voice itself is inferior in
timbre and range.

Long before I began my dissections, I had

noted that the sweetest of the flute notes ut-
tered by the mocking-bird and the blue-jay
appeared to be blown out through a rigidly
distended throat, whilst the delicately qua-
vered passages of the mocking-bird’s song
were, seemingly, manufactured at the root
of the tongue. To get evidence of this, care-
fully watch your caged mocker when he is
delivering a labored staccato combination,
and you will see the convulsive shake of the
mouth muscles and the peculiar management
of the lower mouth space, by which he differ-
entiates the notes. On the other hand, he
will whistle, and when he has ended you can
scarcely say whether or not he opened or
moved his mouth at all during the perform-
ance.
‘ There is an interesting ventriloquial effect
produced by the purely syringeal or laryn-
geal notes of a bird’s voice. This is very
pronounced in the call of the quail, and es-
pecially in the piping of young wild turkeys;
but it is most noteworthy in some of the
night-cries of the mocking-bird. True song,
however, has nothing of this peculiarity in it;
even the careless shadow lay of the indigo-
bird has its definite expression of place and
distance, no matter how sketchy its outline.

From all we can gather it appears most
probable that in its present form our song-
bird proper—our bird with a song to sing—is
memansich oliler than man; that he found his.

98 SYLVAN SECRETS.

song just in time to gladden the ears of God’s
last and greatest creation; that he struggled
through countless ages and awful changes in
order to fit himself for our entertainment.
Think what the avian race has endured since
first Archeeopteryx felt the feathers begin to
bud in his arms! What a long, slow, hesitat-
ing, faltering current of development, from a
scaly amphibian of the paleozoic time, up,
up, to the glorious state of the nightingale
and the mocking-bird! I never see a brown
thrush flashing his brilliant song from the
highest spray of a tree without letting a
thought go back over the way he has come
to us, and I always feel that to protect and
defend the song-bird is one of man’s clearest
duties. Indeed, nothing is better indicated
by the records of the ages than that beautiful
colors, rich fragrance, and bird-song were
made especially for us. There were no
flowers, properly so called, in paleozoic
times. Amidst all the luxuriant vegetation
of the coal measures, not a fossil blossom is
found, nor do the rocks give up a single but-
terfly or other insect which was probably
highly or delicately colored. The ancient
birds (reasoning from analogy) were not gay-
feathered, and, as I have shown, were not
able to sing. But when man appeared the
world was ready for him; the hills and the
valleys and the broad plains were covered
with verdure and bloom, and the air was rich
with perfume and resonant with bird-song.
He might have looked around scarcely able
to know whether the butterflies were winged
flowers, or the flowers vegetable butterflies.
All this great, riant, blooming, perfumed,
music-filled world was for him and his beau:
tiful companion, Well might it be said that

GENESIS OF BIRD-SONG. 99

they were in a garden, an Eden. Well might
the gush of song from a myriad swelling
throats, around, above, everywhere, suggest
that the very stars of morning were singing
together.

Iam inclined to the belief, from my own
observation, that many of our birds are still
in a transition state as regards the develop-
ment of their vocal organs. Take the wood-
peckers, a very unmusical family, and we
shall find the golden-wing giving some evi-
dence of acquiring a song, apace with his
departure from the true woodpecker habit.
The wood-thrush appears to lack a million
years or so of practice and hereditary devel-
opment to make him sing as well as the
mocking-bird, though his voice is as sweet as
a silver bell. The meadow-lark is very nearly
a singer, so is the bluebird, whilst the blue-
jay does at rare intervals render a low, mel-
low, incomparably pure flute passage, as if
whistling a snatch from a future score of its
own. The tufted tit-mouse stops just short
of what one fancies would be a fine, clear lay,
and the cardinal grossbeak puts on all the -
airs of an accomplished musician, without
being quite able to find a tune.

Comparative anatomy bears out these sug-
gestions, showing that development of voice
in birds runs quite along with the develop-
ment of the syrinx, whilst development of
song power keeps well up with and is depend-
ent on the correlative efficiency of the syrinx
and mouth arrangement. No crow, or black-
bird (American), or other songless oscine is
capable of learning to sing, nor can it be, un-
til a change shall have taken place, not in its
larynx or syrinx, but in the shape of the pos-
terior part of its mouth with relation to its

100 SYLVAN SECRETS.

tongue and the opening of the trachea. In
every case where a bird approaches the mar-
gin of song-making it will be found to possess
a mouth arrangement superior to that of birds
which have no tendency toward song. Even
the mouth and tongue of the golden-winged
woodpecker are verging in the direction of
the true development; its bill is growing
slender and weak, is taking on the song-bird
curve, and the posterior part of the tongue is
being modified. Indeed, Colaptes auratus is
much nearer the true singing bird’s estate
than any rook, no matter how beautifully de-
veloped its syrinx, but it is not nearer the
possession of the greatest vocal power, the
power of articulate expression.

Such isa hasty. glimpse of the genesis of
bird-song, a subject which might well have a
volume devoted to it; for so longas Keat’s
ode to anightingale and Shelley’s toa sky-lark
shall exist, no one dare say that bird-song is
not worthy of the highest attention.

Ws
ANATOMY OF BIRD-SONG.

f

THE vocal organs of the birds have received
much attention from the comparative anato
mists, and have been the subject of many
theories, accompanied with more or less figur.
ing and minute description. Mé cgillivray has
been followed pretty closely by all the bird
anatomists since he wrote his British Birds.
and especially has his exposition of the office
and modus operandi of the so-called syrina
been accepted as if without question. Pa
haps the best work yet done in this field sc fa
as it goes (and outside of Macgillivray’s) 1
Miiller’s Researches, Berlin Ac. 1845, though
Owen and Parker and Huxley, not to mention
a great many others, have touched the subject
with deft hands in passing by. Asa rule,
however, and naturally enough, the attention
of all these competent scientists has been
directed more particularly to the anatomical
side of the subject, to the neglect, in some
degree at least, of the physiological side. The
syrinx, a peculiar valve-box attached to and
forminga specialized part of the oscine larynx,
has been described over and over again, and
song-making assigned as its function. Curi-
ously enough, Macgillivray’s famous drawings
—the figures upon which everybody has been
content to rely for so many years—were
made from a rook, a bird without a singing
voice, though possessed of what is called the
typical oscine syrinx.

Some years ago, while dissecting, a meadow-
lark I became sceptical upon the subject of the

102 THE ANATOMY OF BIRD-SONG.

bird-voice being formed or originated in the
syrinx. I admit that my doubt had no scien-
tific basis at first, for it was suggested by the
feeble and insignificant appearance of the
organ, but it bore upon my mind with suffi-
cient weight to send me back to the books for a
re-study of the subject. There were Macgil-
livray’s figures again, drawn from the larynx
and syrinx of the rook, a typical oscine, and
there was Professor Huxley’s singularly clear
description, accepted by everybody. But the
doubt had got into my mind unbidden and it
would not obey when I ordered it out. Sol
set about making original investigations,
which have taken much time and covered a
great deal more ground than I intended, and
which, nevertheless, are yet far from complete.
I began by making first a thorough study of
the construction of the oscine larynx from
specimens collected by myself. In doing this
I took from various species the larynx and
syrinx with the tongue attached, and com-
pared them in every way, making minutely
copious notes and sketches as I went along.
Next I dissected these members with a view
to becoming certainly familiar with their
structure and with their mode of action inde-
pendently and correlatively. At the same
time every anatomical feature of the bird’s
mouth was studied and experimented upon
with full sketches and notes. As an aid to
my investigations with knife, needle, and
microscope, I patiently and closely watched
caged birds while singing, and witha powerful
field-glass gave wild birds the same attention
during their lyrical performances.

It may not be out of place to state that in
the course of all these studies I made journeys
which, taken together, have covered a large
part of the territory east of the Mississippi
River and west of the Alleghany Mountaing

THE ANATOMY OF BIRD-SONG. 108

and between Lake Superior and the Gulf of
Mexico. My work has been prosecuted every
month of the year, and my birds have been of
every age from nestlings up, and while I have
taken the syrinx and other members of the
vocal organ from the male rather than from
the female, still I have not neglected the
latter.

Finally, as a part of my self-appointed task,
I have examined by every method I could
command, the voice qualities possessed by our
song-birds. This last I consider of importance
in view of the fact that a difference in voice
quality naturally suggests a difference of
some degree in the development of the vocal
organs. The timbre, or, for that matter, any
quality of bird-voice varies as much between
species as does the appearance of any notable
physical feature, whilst among the true sing-
ers there is no appreciable difference of
syrinx-development, so far as my examina-
tions have disclosed, but of this in the proper
place.

If the question arise, and I must answer
why I have made this study, I shall deem it
enough for me to say that I had to doit. The
subject took hold of me and would not be
shaken off. The birds, singly, in wisps, and in
clamorous mobs, assaulted me with their
melodious missiles, and taunted me with the
mystery of their song-power. In the dark
woods of the Middle West, along the shores
of the Northern lakes, in the blooming thick-
ets of the Florida peninsula, in the swamps of
the creole country, and all through the pictur-
esque hill region of Alabama, Georgia, the
Carolinas, and Tennessee, they had jeered
_at me, laughed at me, scolded me, and
whistled me to scorn, and then, to com-
plete my perplexity, they had sung me to
sleep and sung me awake with delicate and

104 THE ANATOMY OF BIRD-SONG.

delicious phrases as new and fresh as dew,
and yet as old as the sea. I could not get rid
of them, even when I shut myself in my
study. IfIturned to the poets, there were
the nightingale and the dove, the mavis, the
sky-lark and the oriole singing away for dear
life; from the preludes to Greek folk-songs
and from the ballads of the love-sick Proven-
eal tramp, or from the roundel of the steel-clad
knight as he rode along the dusty highway
with the Rhone on one hand and the vine-
yards on the other, I heard the bird-notes
bubble out to mingle with the tinkle of cith-
ern aud the quaver of hautbois. The orators,
the essayists, the preachers, and all the tribes
of romancers brought me echoes of sylvan
fluting. Then if I turned to the pages of
science and rushed to the extreme of ‘solid
reading,” I fared no better; for even the rec-
ords of geology eulogized the birds, and I
heard strange twitterings of avian voices
trickling like spring-streams out of the an-
cient rocks. Not less in the books than in
the woods and. fields was bird-song tantaliz-
ing, for at every point some subtle and elusive
suggestion arose, only to escape final analysis.
Keats, in his Ode to a Nightingale blows
through his words something inexpressible
which haunts and taunts the understanding
like a half-forgotten strain of dream music,
and the same mysterious challenge to one’s
soul exhales from the strange inscriptions
sketched in the deep-buried stones of seons
ago, where the fragments of vanished bird-
forms hint of unknowable life-forces dried up
long before man felt the breath of God. One
must say this reverently and with no ques-
tion of a clash between Nature and the in-
spired record arising in one’s mind, for the
Bible is not a natural-history book, nor is
geology a scheme of salvation, There is no

THE ANATOMY OF BIRD-SONG. 105

clash between the two. But to the bird-
voices that have charmed all manner of men
and women, let us turn in the spirit of the
truth-seeker, and leave the fools biting the
iron spikes of vain contention. There shall
be neither vagary nor agnosticism in our per-
formances; we will simply look into the
birds’ mouths, and inquire about their tender
flutings, and examine their melodious throats.

Nor will we indulge in the precious jargon
of the sciences, any further than to borrow a
few of its most necessary technical words and
phrases in case we are hard pressed for a
means of lucid expression.

Study in the fields and woods is so different
from study in the library and laboratory, —
that in writing of it one is apt to forget to
respect that dusty, musty air and that
skeleton-like stiffness of style so dear to the
heart of the closet scientist. After all, how-
ever, it is quite probable that there really is
nothing in truth which demands or deserves
the ill treatment implied by harsh words and
unmelodious phrasing. Indeed I sometimes
wonder that comparative anatomists are not
all poets, like Goethe, or seers, like Emerson.
The truths of biology are so perfectly out-
lined, and yet so dim, so near, and yet so
unreachable, so set in an atmosphere of fasci-
nating mystery, so suggestive of inexpressible
things hovering just beyond the reach of
thought, that the imagination strikes at them,
as a bird might strike at its own shining re-
flection in a shimmering summer pool. I
dare say that one manifestation of life is just
as mysterious as any other; but the mystery
of song, having the charm we all know yet
cannot explain, isa double mystery. Emer-
son understood it well when he exclaimed:

‘* Aloft, in secret veins of air,
Blows the sweet breath of song!”

106 THE ANATOMY OF BIRD-SONG.

ET;

In his description of the syrinx, Huxley,
taking it for granted that bird-song is gener-
ated in that organ, declares: ‘‘ The voice of
birds is not formed in the larynx, but in the
byrinx.”

To understand what is meant by this state-
ment, let us examine the anatomy of a typical
bird-syrinx. If for this purpose we kill a
rook, as did Macgillivray, and proceed to cut
out its tongue with the entire tracheal column
attached, we shall find that the opening of
the trachea is just posterior to the root of the
tongue. From this opening, down to where
it is divided into two bronchial tubes, the
trachea of most song-birds slightly decreases
in diameter. At the point of division, how-
ever, a peculiar modification of structure
takes place. This modification of the trachea
is the syrinx, which, viewed exteriorly, is a
roundish bundle of muscular fiber covering
the bony and cartilaginous frame of the
organ, whilst its interior is a delicate but
firmly adjusted system of valves. The main
body of the tracheal column is an elastic tube
of long rings held together by a tough and
flexible covering, and furnished with muscles
by which it may be shortened or elongated at
the will of the bird.

The glottis, as the opening of the trachea is
called, is a slit somewhat elliptical in its
general form, set between the _ barb-like
prongs of the hyoid bone. This opening is
furnished with a rim of muscle and mem-
brane and can be opened, closed, or made to
assume a great variety of forms at the bird’s
will. Immediately over the glottis, in the
roof of the bird’s mouth is a narrow longi-
tudinal groove that in its anterior extremity
is cxactly formed to receive the bony tip of

THE ANATOMY OF BIRD-SONG. 107

the tongue, which in true song-birds thins
down to a very delicate degree. All the
movements of the glottis are intimately con-
nected with those of the tongue, so that the
latter organ, as will be seen presently, has
much to do with bird-song; indeed it has
much more to do with it than has the syrinx.

Sound, as exemplified in the avian voice, 19
the vibration of a column of air by an expul-
sion of breath from the lungs through the
glottis into the mouth cavity. Properly
speaking, there isno such thing as a bird
voice in the popular meaning of the word
italicised. A bird whistles, chirrups, twit-
ters, clucks, croaks, quacks etc. ; but every
sound it utters is a wind-note as pure and
simple, so far as its origin is concerned, as
any note of a flute. There is no such thing
as a bird’s vocal cord. No sound ever had its
origin in a bird’s so-called syrinx. The vibra-
tion of a membrane has nothing whatever to
do with creating the sounds uttered by birds,
but it may modify and vary the form of
those sounds.

Without appealing to the anatomical evi-
dence, which, however, I shall not neglect to
do in the proper place, I might suggest some
general objections to the syrinx theory. For
instance, some of the pure, clear notes uttered
by a mocking-bird may be heard, on a favora-
ble morning, at a distance of nearly or quite
half a mile. The so-called vocal cords of this
bird’s syrinx are less than the sixteenth of an
inch in length, and are stowed in a thickening
of the trachea some two inches below its
opening. Now how can it be possible for so
strong, clear, and puye a sound to be generated
by so short and feeble a cord, and at the bot-
tom of so long and slender a tube? Let me
ask the reader to pause just here and whistle,
carefully noting that the sound is created in

1088 THE ANATOMY OF BIRD-SONG.

the oval orifice formed for the purpose by the
lips, and that the pitch and tone quality are
governed by the cavity of the whistler’s
mouth and throat. In other words, the notes
in whistling are caused by the breath from
the lungs passing through the opening be-
tween the lips, and they are given character by
the volume and length of the vibratory col-
umn of air in the mouth and trachea of the
whistler. Now make a deep cup of your
hand and hold it over your mouth while you
whistle. You find by careful experiment
that any interference with the column of air
in front of the mouth-orifice also curiously
modifies the sounds.

The bird’s glottis is the whistling orifice;
there the sounds are generated, and their
character is controlled by the vibrations of
two columns of air, one in the trachea, the
other in the cavity of the bird’s mouth and
throat. The glottis is set in the midst of a
tangle of muscles, fibrous tendons, and elastic
membranes belonging to itself, the tongue,
the mouth, and the throat of the bird. Any
movement of the tongue, the throat, or the
mandibles of the bird affects the glottis in
some degree, so that in the case of the best
songsters some of the vocal movements are
intricately compound, and consequently the
sounds produced are likewise compound,
but not in origin, simply in modification.
For instance, in the croaking ofa yellow-
billed cuckoo, the sounds are begun at the
glottis and would be clear whistle-notes but
for the form assumed by the bird’s mouth and
throat, and the vibratory reflection caused by
the action of the elastic membranes against
which the bird’s breath impinges as it leaps
from the trachea. The fact that the sounds
uttered by the crows, the cuckoos, and many
other oscines are gutteral in effect has led to

THE ANATOMY OF BIRD-SONG. 109

gross error in the conclusions arrived at by
writers upon the subject of bird-song. The
harsh croaking notes, when closely observed,
are found actually to begin asif the bird were
. going to whistle; but the sounds are arrested
by the tongue and mouth-roof, and flung back
into the throat, so to speak, where they are
distorted, broken, and specialized into a char-
acteristic rasping gurgle-phrase, which at a
distance is taken for a genuine voice-effect,
because of the peculiar jar or vibration of, the
throat and mouth membranes communicated
to the reflected air-column above and posterior
to the glottis.

It is quite the habit of ornithologists to allege
that a rook or a shrike has just as good a
vocal organ as a mocking-bird or a wood-
thrush, and, viewing the syrinx as such
organ, doubtless they are right; the error re-
sides in the point of view. The very fact that
a logger-head shrike with its preposterous
rasp-voice has a really larger and better syr-
inx than the robin, or the mocking-bird, or
any other sweet singer, ought of itself to give
rise to some doubt as to whether the voice-
organ of the birds has been rightly located by
the anatomists. Prof. Huxley’s description
of the bird-syrinx is admirable in every way ;
no one can find fault with it from the anatomi
cal point of view; but he assumes the physi-
ological part of the problem, or rather takes
the function of the so-called organ as granted
without proof. It is clear to my mind that
he was led to do this by Macgillivray’s brill-
iant treatment of the subject, and Parker
all but admits that he has submitted to the
same influence. Dr. Elliot Coues simply adopts
the reasoning and presents the plates of Mac-
gillivray’s work. Indeed it appears, so far
as I know, that no biologist since Macgillivray .

110 THE ANATOMY OF BIRD-SONG.

has given the subject thorough analysis -
first hand.

Let us now examine the avian syrinx with
a view to settling the question whether or not
it is asong-making organ. In doing this we
will choose the syrinx of an accomplished
singer, so that there may be no doubt in the
matter.

In making my dissections and other studies
I began with the mocking-bird and ended
with the wood-thrush, branching out between
these to take in many birds not singers at all.

The syrinx of the mocking-bird will serve
our purpose just now.

Ls,

The syrinx of the mocking-bird is situated
in the cavity of the bird’s breast near the
upper part of the lungs and it is made up of
the following parts: A slight enlargement of
the lower rings of the trachea, forming a
drum divided internally at its posterior ex-
tremity by a bony cross-piece called the pes-
sulus, a membranous cartilage rising above
the pessulus a little way into the trachea
proper, dividing the hollow’ thereof into
halves, and a wisp of delicate muscles. The
trachea forks at the lower part of the syrinx
into two bronchial tubes that pass directly to
the lungs right and left.

The reader may get an excellent idea of a
mocking-bird’s trachea and syrinx by imag-
ining for the trachea a hollow large-sized
broom-straw an inch and a half in length, one
end of which is the glottis, and the other end,
slightly enlarged, the syrinx, out of which
the bronchial tubes pass at an angle with each
other of some fifty degrees, Further, imagine
this bifurcated lower end of the broom-straw
to be furnished with a valve-like division-
wall rising a little way up its hollow, just

THE ANATOMY OF BIRD-SONG. 111

above the point of bifurcation. In other
words, imagine the hollow of the syrinx (lower
end of the straw) divided into two equal
apartments by a thin vertical wall, whilst
from each apartment passes a smaller tube
just like the trachea (the straw). Such is a
general description of what has heretofore
been considered the song-organ of the highest
kind of bird. I cannot do better, however,
than to add here a condensation of the de-
tailed description prepared by Prof. Huxley:
1st, The trachea is a hollow cylinder formed
by bony rings. 2nd, ‘‘The hindermost (lowest)
rings of the trachea coalesce and form a pe-
culiarly arranged chamber immediately be-
yond (below) which the bronchi diverge, and
from their posterior wall, where one bronchus
passes into the other, a vertical fold of the
lining membrane rises in the middle towards
the tympanum (syrinx chamber) and forms a
vertical septum between the anterior aper-
tures of the two bronchi. The anterior edge
of this septum is a free and thin membrana
semilunarts, but in its interior a cartilagin-
ous or osseus frame is developed and becomes
united with the tympanum. The base of this
frame sends out two cornua, one along the
dorsal, the other along the ventral edge of the
inner wall of the bronchus of its side, which
in this part of its extent is membranous and
elastic, and named the membrana tympani-
formis interna, Opposite this the bronchial
rings are incomplete, and have the form of
arches embracing the outer moiety of the
bronchus. The second and third of these
bronchial arcs are freely movable, and elastic
tissue accumulated upon their inner surfaces
gives rise to a fold of the mucous membrane
which forms the outer boundary of a cleft,
bounded on the inner side by the membrana
semilunaris, The air forced through these

112 THE ANATOMY OF BIRD-SONG.

two clefts from the lungs sets these elastic
margins vibrating, and thus gives rise to a
musical note, the character of which is chiefly
determined by the tension of the elastic mar-
gins and the length of the tracheal column of
air. The muscles by the contraction of which
these two factors of the voice are modified,
are extrinsic and intrinsic.”

In the case of every true song bird that I
have examined there are six pairs of intrin-
sic muscles controlling the tympanum and
bronchial arcs. By the contraction of these
muscles, the ares and the tympanum are
moved in a variety of ways. The mocking-
bird, however, has much weaker syrinx mus-
cles than the shripe, the cuckoo, or the blue-
jay, though if Prof. Huxley’s theory of song-
generation is correct, the mocking-bird’s
organ should be much the more powerful in
every respect.

The ‘‘fold” of membrane described by
Prof. Huxley as occupying the inner surface
of the free ares of each bronchus and the
membranous edge of the frame of the pessu-
lus are really delicate valves whose function
or office is quite different from that assigned
to them by the anatomists.

The minute intrinsic muscles controlling the
mocking-bird’s syringeal membranous pro-
jections are so arranged that the mouths of
the bronchial tubes may be almost, if not
quite, closed by the extension of the ‘‘ folds,”
or elastic margins, and by this means the
bird is enabled to measure in the nicest man-
ner the amount of air thrown from the lungs
into the trachea. Thus when it is whistling
a rapid staccato, the delicately modulated
notes following one another like raindrops in
a shower, these valves in the syrinx are doling
out the air in precisely the right quantities

THH ANATOMY OF BIRD-SONG. 1138

and at exactly the proper intervals for
the purpose in view.

The so-called vocal cords in the syrinx
of a blue-bird (Sialia sialis) are less than
the twentieth of an inch in greatest ex-
tent. Indeed the free membrane of the
septum is scarcely discoverable with the
naked eye, and yet the fife-notes of that
beautiful bird may be heard far across
the summer fields, sweet, clear, mellow
as the softest quaver of the flute d’amour, all
owing, as the great anatomists would have
it, to the vibrations of those deep-set infini-
tesimal membranous margins!

The chief stumbling-block of all the investi-
gators has been that they have taken it for
granted that birds have voices like those of
the mammals, and that consequently each
singer must have a setof vibrating vocal
cords somewhere in his breathing tube; when
in fact the avian musician’s syrinx has no
more need for vocal cords than had the
' famous syrinx or Pan-pipe of the ancient
god.

Let us again consider the act of whistling.
Note the fact that you can run the gamut
without perceptible change of the size or shape
of the mouth orifice, the sounds being graded
by controlling the size of the air column be-
hind the orifice. Now, the bird in whistling
controls both the size of the orifice and the
extent of the air columns above and below
the glottis. This giveshim a range and pow-
er of expression not to be approached by the
human whistler. He can open wide his
mouth and whistle, as does the quail, with
almost deafening shrillness and penetration,
or, closing his bill until a mere slit is seen be-
tween the mandibles, he can blow a dreamy
hautbois note, slender and refined as ever

114 THE ANATOMY OF BIRD-SONG.

stirred the air of Arcady, or trembled in the
vineyards of old Provence.

But bird-song cannot have its mystery
wholly solved by dissection. The parts of the
organs are so extremely minute and so ob-
scure in their connection and correlation that
we must turn to extrinsic and general obser-
vations for assistance in interpreting their
functions. With this view, let us go watch
a mocking-bird while he sings.

IV.

Everybody has noticed how a singing bird
expands and compresses its throat just below
and between the prongs of the lower mandible
during the utterance of its musical phrases.
When the notes are keenand shrill, thethroat
is drawn close, and when a grave passage is
blown, the throat is puffed out like that of a
toad. This puffing process is not merely a
lengthening of the trachea (or tracheal column
of air), as Prof. Huxley would have us be-’.
lieve it is; it is more. The posterior cavity of
the mouth is greatly expanded laterally, ver-
tically, and longitudinally, so as toform a
hollow drum behind the glottis. Into this
chamber (lined with tightly drawn mem-
branes) the breath from the glottis is reflect-
ed by the tongue and the anterior part of the
roof of the mouth; there its vibrations are
communicated to the largest possible column
of air, sounding the gravest notes of the bird’s
voice. When the throat is compressed, this
drum or chamber is reduced to the minimum,
and the vibrant column of air gives forth the
sharpest sounds possible to the organ.

Observe the mocking-bird or the brown
thrush, as it sings

‘¢Of summer in full-throated ease,”
and you will see that the lengthening or short-
ening of the tracheal column has but little to

THE ANATOMY OF BIRD-SONG. 115

do with the relative values of the notes. I
have seen a mocking-bird with its chin resting
upon its breast run the full compass of its
voice; whilst, on the other hand, it is not un-
common for it to utter every note it has
mastered, with its neck at full stretch. ‘Such
feats are possible on account of the exceeding
elasticity of the walls of the posterior mouth-
cavity and the anterior throat-cavity. The
shortening of the trachea really does this: it
gives the lungs greater power to act directly
upon the glottis, thus adding volume to the
notes. For instance, if you watch a quail as
it whistles ‘‘ Bob White,” you will note that
its head moves up and down with the length-
ening aud shortening of the trachea necessary
to the extremes of power required. The yel-
low-billed cuckoo, in uttering its well-known
croak, slightly elevates its beak, and you can
see its upper throat palpitating in accord with
the rattling notes. Indeed, it appears to be
sucking the sounds back from the glottis into
the hollow of the mouth and throat, where
they are shaken about like peas in a box!
All the common song-birds have a way of ut-
tering falsetto notes occasionally. The most
notable example of this is the nocturn of the
mocking-bird, in which falsetto phrases are
used with singularly plaintive and touching
effect. After careful study, I have concluded
that the notes above described are produced
by a division of the vibrating air-columnin the
mouth, caused by the bird drawing its tongue
back nearly over the glottis, while the man-
dibles are kept as nearly closed as_ possible.
The brown thrush is expert in rendering very
delicate falsetto sketches, and watching him
with a strong field- glass has convinced me
that I have correctly described his method.
The caged mocking-bird rarely indulges in
this delicious music—and therefore is hard to

1146 THE ANATOMY OF BIRD-SONG.

study, since his falsetto in his wild state is
mostly a nocturnal performance.

The sparrows, the thrushes, the meadow-lark,
and some of the warblers elevate their heads
(with their beaks at an angle of at least forty-
five degrees with the horizon) in singing. It
is by this attitude that they can give greatest
freedom to their throats. Other songsters,
including the orioles, the blue-bird, and most
of the smaller fry, utter their notes while in
any position, even on the wing.

I have called attention to these extrinsic
features of the song-habit in birds because I
deem them of great value in determining the
voice functions of the trachea and syrinx of
the oscines.

vi

The most difficult question in our investiga-
tion arises out of the unmusical notes—the
quacks, croaks, jarring cries, and cackling
noises made by the birds when not inclined
to whistle. If, on one hand, a pure flute note
cannot be made by the vibration of the mi-
nute syringeal membranes of a mocking-bird,
it would appear, on the other hand, that a
hoarse, gutteral, rasping snarl could not be
originated by a whistling orifice, or, in other
-words, by the glottis of a mocking-bird, a
crow, or a meadow-lark; but a little attention
will clear up the trouble. When we are very
near the crow, for instance, his voice divides
itself into two distinct sounds, one a clear,
steady wind-note, the other a jarring noise,
harsh and disagreeable. The effect is the
well-known caw, sometimes successfully imi-
tated by a boy makinga nasal sound in his
hollowed hands. The jarring or rasping ele-
ment of the crows voice is really caused by
the vibration of a membrane, but itis not a
syringeal membrane. The note first made by

THE ANATOMY OF BIRD-SONG. . 117

the breath from the glottis is reflected back
by the bird’s lifted tongue, and the element of
harshness is caught from the strained and vi-
bratory membranes of the mouth and the
nasal and throat cavities. The peculiar part
played by the syrinx in this case is that by a
rocking, quivering, or gyratory motion it im-
parts to the tracheal column of air sent out
through the glottis a spiral or palpitant cur-
rent. This current would blow a quavering
flute-note of some sort were it not interrupted
at the glottis by the bird’s uplifted tongue, and
broken and flung back into the throat and
nasal cavities, where it is further disintegrat-
ed by the elastic membranes, as already men-
tioned.

The parrot is a strong instance of a bird who
has a wonderful voice, but whose syrinx is
weak and imperfect, viewed from Prof. Hux-
ley’s ground. Thereis no septum or median
membrane in the parrot’s organ, and there-
fore one ‘‘vocal cord” is missing, and yet
how clear is his whistle, how pure his reed-
note calls, how deep and how incomparably
rich his throat cries! Surely ail these are not
made in that poor little half-equipped syrinx !
The thick, heavy, fleshy tongue of the parrot,
and the spacious throat-cavity behind it, are
the special means by which its voice is con-
trolled and enriched. The so-called speaking
voice of this and other birds is a lingual and
throat modification of the glottis notes. Again,
the large, pad-like tongue of the parrot, perfect-
ly reflecting the breath from the glottis back
into the throat-cavity, gives the best proof of
what I have claimed, by producing the
closest parody of a genuine voice ever uttered
by abird. Just here is the place to say that
all of the flute-voiced birds have very slender
and delicate tongues. I have before me as I
write the tongue of a mocking-bird and whit

118 THE ANATOMY OF BIRD-SONG.

of a loggerhead shrike, each attached to the
trachea and syrinx of the bird, and upon com-
parison the shrike’s tongue is found much
the thicker and clumsier, though without any
tendency to fleshiness. The tongues of the
wood-thrush and the mocking-bird are almost
exactly alike, whilst those of the orchard-ori-
ole and the bluebird are very closely similar.

The whole arrangement of the lower man-
dible (with the tongue and the muscles and
membranes clustered about it), in the case of
the real songsters, appears to be modified
with reference to music-making. In execut-
ing arapid score, the mocking-bird’s tongue
moves like a vibrating piece of steel, and the
same is true of all the twitterers and brilliant
voice-shakers. Pure flute-warbling, however,
is performed with thesyrinx, though not gen-
erated in it, the muscular movements at the
bottom of the tracheal column letting the air
out of the lungs in palpitations (like those
from the human mouth in flute or fife play-
ing), and imparting to it various degrees of
volume and velocity.

The tongue-notes of most birds are easily dis-
tinguishable by the ‘‘t” sound with which
they begin—the syllables ‘‘tee” and ‘‘ tit”
often recurring. The meadow-lark utters a
cry which sounds like ‘‘tith-h-h-t.” It is
made by breaking a prolonged note up be-
tween the tongue and the roof of the mouth.
The red-winged blackbird renders a curious
phrase composed of a ‘‘ shake” and a tongue-
note combined. A friend of mine character-
izes the performance as something ‘‘ between
asnort and a giggle.” The belted kingfisher
has a way of chattering through a chink be-
tween his tongue and the roof of his mouth;
his voice is a very keen and clear one, de-
spite the primitive condition of his voice-
organs, and to my ear it is not without a cer-

THE ANATOMY OF BIRD-SONG. 119

tain touch of picturesque melody. Even the
woodpeckers, notably Erythrocephalus and
Colaptes, have very pure fife-notes.

But let us now turn and examine the true
mouth of the avian flute.

VI.

The upper end of a song-bird’s trachea is
peculiarly modified, terminating in a chink
or slit just at the root of the tongue. This
slit, the glottis, is surrounded by a bundle of
muscles, and has two heavy lips by which it
is closed at the bird’s will. The anterior por-
tion of the glottis aperture is nearly circular,
but it terminates posteriorly in a thin angle,
like a keen knife-cut. Out of this little chink
has been blown the rapturous sylvan fluting
about which the poets have raved since the
days of Homer and Sappho.

Just in front of the glottidian fissure there
is a valve-like fold of mucous membrane
which, when the tongue is raised, is drawn
across the anterior line of the circular part of
the opening. This modified upper end of the
trachea, the so-called larynx, is connected
with the tongue-bone by slender muscles, and
the lips of the fissure are moved by nicely
adjusted intrinsic muscles, of which the mock-
ing-bird has five pairs. The contractor mus-
cles of the trachea are connected with the
larynx, and when they are drawn taut the
glottis is depressed between the horns of the
hyoid bone, which helps to form a resonant
cavity in the bird’s mouth, and at the same
time the anterior fold of mucous membrane
is erected as asort of sounding-board in front
of the orifice, while the tongue acts as a re-
flector or vibrator, as the need may be. In
the mocking-bird and, indeed, in nearly all
the true song-birds that I have dissected, the
air cells, ‘‘ membranous pneumatic sacs,” are

1200 THE ANATOMY OF BIRD-SONG.

largely and peculiarly developed, and serve
a good turn in the matter of song-making,
each inflated membrane, especially those of
the anterior part of the thorax, acting as a
drum-head or sounding-board. In a word,
the whole bird is pneumatic, and often in
the ecstasy of great song-bursts, it vibrates
throughout from tip to tip, as if shaking the
sound in a spray of melody from its shining
feathers. The peculiar swaying and palpitat-
ing motions with which most birds accom-
pany their singing are attendant upon the
respiratory exertions necessary to keep the
pneumatic sacs full of air. Here again that
semi-automatic action, peculiar to the avian
structure, comes into play, for each one
of these respiratory movements affects the
trachea, larynx, and glottis by muscular
interference, if I may so call it. That
is, muscles called into action for one pur-
pose affect other muscles, and cause them
to contract, thus bringing about an in-
voluntary double movement. Thus when
the barn-yard cock stretches his neck at full
length to crow, the movement depresses the
glottis, lifts the tongue, and forms a sound-
chamber in the posterior mouth-cavity, all
at once.

The lips of the mocking-bird’s glottis are
extremely elastic, and may be so drawn as
to give any shape to the glottidian fissure that
may be desired in forming a note. So when
the tongue is drawn back with the barbs or
prongs of its bony tip close above the glottis,
and by muscular action is set quivering, the
purest flute notes are disintegrated and sent
forth in a shower of sounds, pleasing or harsh
according to the correlation of the other fac-
tors of modification.

I take the mocking-bird (mimus polyglottis)
as the highest example, in my discussion of

THE ANATOMY OF BIRD-SONG. 121

‘‘song anatomy,” and it must be admitted
that it is the highest type of song-bird from
every point of view, though its syrinx is ab-
solutely insignificant. The anatomy of its
larynx is, on the other hand, quite wonderful.
For several reasons I have chosen to make a
comparison between the shrike and the
mocking-bird, mainly, however, on account
of the general resemblance borne by the log-
gerhead and the mocker in size and coloring,
and of the great difference in their voice
powers.

The trachea of the shrike tapers very rap-
idly from glottis to syrinx, while that of
Mimus is nearly uniform from just in front
of the syrinx to where it suddenly expands
near the glottidean fissure. The shrike has
but three pairs of intrinsic laryngeal mus
cles, the lips of the glottis are thick and clum-
sy, as compared with those of the mocking-
bird, and the fissure is larger and more ob-
tusely angular, whilst the tongue is broader
and far less delicate than the songster’s.

The laryngeal enlargement of the mocking-
bird’s trachea is slightly egg-shaped, or keg-
shaped ; that of the shrike is simply a con-
tinuation of the tracheal expansion beginning
at the syrinx. The shrike has a well-devel-
oped septum; indeed, in every particular its
syrinx is far superior to that of the mocking-
bird, and the contractor muscles of its trachea
are much more powerful. Its defect, as in
the case of the crow, the cuckoo, and many
other birds, lies in the formation of the glot-
tis, the mouth-cavity, and the larynx, the
shape of the tongue, and the lack of a suffi-
cient number of intrinsic laryngeal muscles
with which to control the shape and action of
the glottidean fissure.

Viewing the larynx and glottis as the
mouth-piece of the avian song-organ or flute,

122 THE ANATOMY OF BIRD-SONG.

the difference between this mouth-piece in
true singers and in oscines that cannot sing is
easy to distinguish. The shrike tries to sing
with his throat wide open—that is, he tries to
whistle without ‘‘puckering” his lips! The
mocking-bird knows better.

VII.

In summing up the facts, or the more im-
portant ones, connected with the ‘‘ anatomy
of bird-song,” I would emphasize the fol-
lowing :

1. The syrinx of the true singing birds is
invariably smaller, weaker, and more ob-
scurely developed than that of the songless
oscines.

2. The laryngeal and glottidean membranes
and muscles are far more highly developed
and specialized in the true singers than they
are in the oscines that cannot sing.

3. The so-called ‘‘ vocal cords” in the
syrinx of the most musical birds are utterly
devoid of the structure of true vocal cords,
and serve merely as valves or stops at the
openings of the bronchial tubes.

4. The intrinsic muscles of the syrinx in
true singers are more delicate, more numer-
ous, and more specialized than those of the
songless oscines, giving greater control over
the management of the breath blown from
the lungs into the trachea.

5. The form of the trachea, just below the
glottis, in other words, the form of the larynx,
in all the accomplished songsters is very dif-
ferent from that in the other oscines, being
somewhat like the ‘‘ egg-choke” in the muz-
zle of the shot-gun barrel.

6. The tongue of the true singer is slenderer
and thinner than that of the whistler, or that
of any other songless oscine.

There are many facts, connected with the
philosophy of the vibration of air-columns,

THE ANATOMY OF BIRD-SONG. 128

which controvert the theory of syringeal
song-generation. This theory makes the
flute upside down, and gives it a jarring
tongue, like that of a jew’s-harp. <A vibra-
tory, sound-producing membrane in the
mocking-bird’s syrinx would destroy utterly
the purity of its rich flute-notes, just as a
harp-tongue in a flute would send a harsh jar
through every strain blown from it. Above
all, a ‘‘ vocal cord ” less than the twentieth of
an inch in length, and but little more than
half as wide as it is long, is not the origin of the
vigorous, far-sent whistling, twittering, and
chirruping that we hear in all the leafy groves
of spring. Syrinx is a good name, suggestive
of the avian pipe, but it should be given to
the larynx, of which the glottis is the mouth-
piece, not to the obscure little pump-valve
box at the hinder end of the trachea.

If I have succeeded in showing that the
mocking-bird is a flute-player, instead of be-
ing a French-harp blower, I shall not regret
my work. Indeed, I do not regret it in any
event, for the scattered spaces of time that I
have filled with it are among the charming
episodes of a varied out-door experience,
brimming now with all manner of melodious
memories.

SO um, Ly OLD HINTS.

I.

OnE of the unaccountable prejudices har-
bored for centuries in the human mind is that
against certain harmless reptiles, birds, and
other animals. It would be easy to fill many
pages with a catalogue of the victims suffer-
ing from this curious obliquity of judgment
on the part of intelligent and even cultured
people. The feeling against non-venomous
reptiles may be attributed, with some stretch
of the truth, to the disgust engendered by
ugliness; but there would appear to be no intel-
ligible foundation whatever for the prejudice
against certain birds. The cat-bird, for in-
stance, a beautiful, useful, and charmingly
musical little creature, naturally inclined to
love man and to serve him, has been almost
universally despised by those who ought
to loveit and defend it. The yellow-billed
cuckoo is another singularly unfortunate bird
in this regard. Inthe Southern States espe-
cially it is the subject of great slander. But
there is, perhaps, no other family of birds
which, in America at least, has been subjected
to such unmitigated, baseless persecution as
that to which the family of woodpeckers has
submitted within the present century, and
falling, too, from the hands of the most en-
lightened populace on the globe. So deep-
rooted is this popular prejudice against the
woodpecker that one may be sure of eliciting
an expression of surprise, if not of contempt,
from almost any audience, by remarking upon
the beauty of any species of the bird. Or-
nithologists have often noted this, and no
part of the prejudice has originated with
them. Indeed no bird has been studied more

126 SOME HYOID HINTS.

enthusiastically or praised more cordially by
intelligent students of natural history than
Picus has been, unless we must except the
kingfisher. The American ornithologists, es-
pecially, have been generous in the time and
labor given to a loving study of the life,
habits, and specific traits of our many and
beautiful woodpeckers. If Wilson’s and Au-
dubon’s noble works could have gone early
into the hands of the people, they would have
been of incalculable benefit in uprooting and
destroying much of the popular, quasi-legen-
dary prejudice of which I have spoken, but
those works were necessarily expensive and
beyond the reach of all but the rich few. It
is only within the last twenty years that pop-
ular science has been serving its true purpose
by taking the cheapest and farthest-reaching
channels of self-distribution, and this great
factor in the progress of common intelligence
and universal culture has, perhaps, come too
late to do its whole work. Still the time has
arrived, no doubt, when one may put into
popular form even a study of woodpecker
life, and be sure of a wide and sympathetic ©
audience. Possibly a mere guarded and tech-
nically severe sketch of some anatomical and
physiological facts of woodpecker biology
would hardly be so secure of popular atten-
tion, and yet the number of persons who
would greedily go through many pages of the
dryest and most abstruse phraseology to get
one grain of new knowledge in any field of sci-
ence is by no meanssmall. In fact, the strong-
est trend of the world’s forces to-day is toward
the popularization and the simplification of
scientific methods of acquiring knowledge in
every field of inquiry. It is thistrend which
is fast bringing us tosee that no knowledge (no
matter of how apparently trivial facts in na-
ture) is unprofitable or without its place in the

SOME HYOID HINTS. 127

great chain of wisdom. Artis not the whole of
life, nor is material progress the only good.
The pleasure of knowledge, never embodied
in painting, sculpture, or poem, nor applied
to any economic purpose, is of itself a mighty
factor in the operations of human life. These
may be trite sentences, but I fear they yet
are not sufficiently axiomatic to shield me
wholly when I come to disclose the subject of
this paper, to wit: The Tongue of a Wood-
pecker. If I should say, the tongue of a night-
ingale, instead, or the tongue of a mocking-
bird, or even the tongue of a blue-bird, I
might hope for a gracious audience, but the
tongue of a woodpecker has not been em-
balmed in melody by a Shelley, a Keats, a
Tennyson, or a Sappho, nor has it been set in
romance by the genius of all ages, nor ever
has it endeared itself to the popular heart by
amorous carols in all the orchards and groves
of the land. Still I might make bold to claim
for my woodpecker’s tongue some pleasing
notes heard in the wild woods when the
mornings are sweet and still.

Buffon, giving rein to the Latin hobby of
romance, described the woodpecker’s life as
one of singular and terrible barrenness and
misery. Indeed if Buffon, viewed in the
light of to-day, may be called an ornitholo-
gist, I may as well modify what I said a while
ago, and admit that one great bird-student has
slandered my subject in a mild way. ‘“‘Its
movements are brusk,” says he, ‘‘it has a
restless air, harsh traits and features, a sav-
age and wild disposition, fleeing all society,
even of its own kind, and when the stress of
passion forces it to seek a mate, it is without
any of those graces with which the feeling
charges the movements of other beings who
experience it with a tender heart.” But my
observations, extending throughout some

128 SOME HYOID HINTS.

years and over a wide scope of country, go
directly to the contrary. There are no hap-
pier, brighter, or more loving birds than our
woodpeckers. True they are noisy, restless,
bellicose, and self-assertive to a degree, but
what strong, healthy, wide-awake bird is not ?
Even Buffon, in giving the French phonetic
rendering of the green woodpecker’s voice,
tio, tio, tio, contradicts himself, for that note
is by no means disagreeable to the ear, being
very like the quee-o, quee-o, quee-o of our
golden-wing and our red-head (Melanerpes).
There is a martial fire and force in the vigor-
ous call of the ivory-billed woodpecker, anda
rather savage strain in the voice of the log-
cock, but both these great birds are bright,
happy, companion-loving, and far from evil-
disposed in any way.

All the smaller woodpeckers have a rather
pleasing cackle, heard mostly in the spring,
varying from gip, gip, gip, through several
shades, to pip, pip, pip, uttered often with
ecstatic rapidity. Two or three species, nota-
bly the golden-wing and the red-head, repeat
the phrase, pee-to, pee-to, as they climb a tree
bole, or gallop through the air. Indeed in the
West and South a large part of the life and
cheer of the woods, fields, and orchards is due
to the activity and loquacity of the wood-
peckers, whose whisking wings and gay colors
constantly attract attention.

But it was not of the vocal habit of the
woodpecker’s tongue that I set myself to
write, pleasing as the task might be.

If you will cast aside all prejudice, and
agree to forego the pleasure of putting your
tongue in your cheek and twirling your
thumbs in derision of my subject, I will pro-
ceed.

}

SOME HYOID HINTS. 129
II.

Any ornithologist will tell you that a wood-
pecker’s tongue is the most peculiar organ he
ever examined, strangely complicated in its
mechanism and singularly striking in the
variations of its special development in dif-
ferent species, and that no organic feature of
any bird has been more minutely studied by
comparative anatomists. From Borelli and
Aldrovande and Méry and Olaiis Jacobeus on
down to Owen, Macgillivray and Parker, there
has been no end to the study and literature of
the peculiarities observable in the hyoid bone
of the Picidz. By all these writers the
Kuropean green woodpecker has been taken
as the type, unless Parker’s use of Picus
minor in his general anatomical studies may
be called an exception.

The anatomy of the green woodpecker, so
far as the tongue is concerned, is almost iden-
tical with that of our American red-head-
ed woodpecker (Melanerpes erythrocephalus),
saving that our bird’s skull has no decided
groovein itscrown. Wehavetwo extremely
specialized genera, Picus and Colaptes, whose
tongue peculiarities are extreme. These may
be taken as types for the purposes of this
paper. Those who are not ornithologists,
however, cannot be supposed to know any-
thing about bird-anatomy, therefore it will be
necessary to sketch here an outline of the
woodpecker’s lingual peculiarities.

The tongue proper is a slender flattish shaft
lying between the mandibles, and flat upon
the lower one when not in use. Thus disposed,
it lacks somewhat of reaching to the end of
the bill. Its fore-end is of a hard horny sub-
stance, and is armed with barbs not unlike
those of a fish-hook. Back of this the tongue-
bone (hyoid) is encased in a sheath of muscu-

130 SOME HYOID HINTS.

lar, membranous, and nervous tissues, and it
divides into two horns, which passing back-
ward and upward, reach forward over the top
of the skull, and down to the base of the
upper mandible, or into the nostril, or curl
under the right eye and rest almost, or quite,
against the front of the quadrate bone. In
making this circuitous passage the forks of
the tongue-bone go on either side of the neck
and come together, without coalescing, on the
back of the skull, whence they remain touch-
ing each other and parallel, to the end of their
course.

In the genus Picus, of which I take the
hairy woodpecker as the typical species, the
hyoid cornua (forks of the tongue-bone) end
their peculiar journey below and rather pos-
terior to the bird’s right eye.

In the genus Melanerpes, of which our
white-and-black red-head is typical, the ter-
minus is on the central front of the skull, just
above the base of the upper mandible, whilst
the genus Colaptes, to which our flicker be-
longs, has its hyoid cornua prolonged into
its nasal cavity by way of a nostril.

In each case, throughout its entire course,
this peculiar hyoidean process is sheathed in
a curiously-woven wisp of muscles and
nerves, which is modified and prolonged be-
yond the bony parts, most peculiarly in the
instances of Picus and Colaptes. 4

The most obvious function of this strangely
specialized hyoid process is to give a great
thrust to the tongue, so that it may be pro-
jected far beyond the end of the bill. The
longer the hyoid cornua the farther the tongue
can be thrust out of the mouth. So that it
has been taken for granted, so far as I know,
that the curling of the cornua over the skull
between the skin and the bone, was merely
the most handy and economical way of diss

SOME HYOID HINTS. 131

posing of them, in order to get the best re-
sults from them in controlling the tongue
movements. Doesit not appear curious, how-
ever, when one comes to note that Colaptes
has its tongue-bones thrust into its nostril,
while those of Picus are curled around under
the eye to near the ear ? :

Although I had previously dissected many
woodpeckers, and had studied for years with
care their tongue-anatomy, it was not until
quite recently that I began to suspect that
another function than that of projecting the
tongue belonged to this peculiar specialization
of the hyoidean apparatus.

During an out-door meeting of the Indiana
Academy of Science, I went into a dense wood
to kill a wood-thrush for dissection. While I
was watching for my bird a hairy woodpecker
came and lit near me on a small dead branch
of a beech tree, where it began to tap the
wood with its bill, meantime slowly hopping
backwards down the stem. It was not more
than eight feet from me, and while watching
it I saw that it would strike two or three
smart blows, and then appear to be listening,
with the tip of its bill resting against the
wood. This hearkening attitude was never
preserved for longer than the merest instant
of time, but its purpose could not be misun-
derstood. The bird was listening to hear any
movements made by worm or larve within
the branch. The bill-taps were meant to
startle the victims and to make them move,
so that they could be heard. I became inter-
ested and watched closely until the bird suc-
cessfully located its prey, and by afew deft
chisel-strokes cut in and took it. When I re-
turned to where the Academy had assembled,
I told President David S. Jordan, the well-
known ichthyologist, that I believed I had
just made an interesting discovery, and sug:

182 SOME HYOID HIN.

gested to him that the hyoid cornua might
aid Picus in hearing. We discussed the mat-
ter for a moment, and the subject passed, but
it came again and again to my mind, till at
length I set about making a systematic study
of it.

In the case of the hairy woodpecker the
tongue muscles are so arranged that by a very
simple action the tongue may be drawn far
back into the mouth-cavity, near the throat.
This is true in a greater or less degree of all
the woodpeckers having the specialized hyoid-

ean process, but in the hairy species it is ex-
tremely marked.

The true woodpeckers, from the great i ivory-
bill down to the little downy species (Pubes-
cens), have poor ears, and are forced to de-
pend upon their excellent eyes for detecting
the approach of an enemy, hence the contin-
ual motion of the head, which has given color
to the statements of Buffon. The log-cock,
which a few years ago was one of the com-
monest birds of the Western ‘‘deadenings,”
makes its great scarlet head-tuft fantastically
conspicuous by tossing it this way and that
in its vigilant watchfulness.

Nearly all the species have the habit of
making a vibrating noise by striking an elas-
tic piece of wood with the bill. This singular
call serves the woodpecker in the place of a
song. To his heavy, dull ears the sound
doubtless is very pleasing. To understand
this, take a string of the size of a guitar
string, and a foot long, place one end between
your teeth and the other between the thumb
and index finger of the left hand, draw it taut,
and strike it lightly with the right thumb.
You will hear a sound quite inaudible to an-
other person, though close to you. This aud-
itory phenomenon is caused by the vibrations
of the string being imparted to the lower jaw-

SOME HYOID HINTS. 133

bone, whose articulations are close to the ears,
and whose muscular, ligamentous, and ner-
vous connections with the ear-bones are very
intimate.

A moment’s reflection will convince anyone
that the woodpecker’s brain must be fortified
against the effect of concussion, for if any
other bird’s head were dashed with such vio-
lence against hard wood, as the woodpecker’s
head habitually is, death would quickly re-
sult. Indeed no person, after examination of
the picidzean habits, can doubt that the wood-
pecker is hard of hearing. Connect with this
the singular fact that those species which are
forced to depend upon hearing to locate their
prey, have the hyoid cornua reaching to the
immediate vicinity of the ear, whilst the spe-
cies not so necessitated show a modification
of those bones, and we have a curious sugges-
tion at the least.

Upon dissecting a hairy woodpecker we dis-
cover that the central shaft of the tongue-bone
is simpler than that of most birds, and that it
forks directly, without definite articulations,
thus making the entire hyoidean apparatus a
continuous and singularly elastic bone, pecul-
larly suited to conducting vibrations through-
out its length.

Now when the bird’s tongue is drawn far
back in the mouth, the posterior end of the
hyoid bones is thrust against a cushion of
membrane, muscle, and ligament lying imme-
diately in front of the quadrate bone, which
is the anterior ear-wall, and if at the same
time the lower mandible is let fall a little, so
that the mouth is slightly open, the posterior
process of the jwgal bone, called the quadrate
jugal, is made to press upon the lower part
of the quadrate bone, which, being slight and
having air-chambers around it, becomes a sort

154 SOME HYOID HINTS.

of tympanum for conducting vibrations to the
auditory nerves.

The upper mandible of the woodpecker is
longer than the lower, and so it receives the
force of every blow made in pecking hard
wood. But this mandible is not movable.

Now, if with a good opera-glass you will
carefully watch a hairy woodpecker when it
is trying to locate a wood-worm in a dead
limb, you will soon note that by marvelous
slight he first strikes the hard outer crust of
the wood a smart blow or two, making a dent
therein. Then into this dent he thrusts his
upper mandible, and allows his lower one’s
point to rest against the wood; at the same
time his tongue is drawn in to the utmost, and
the whole attitude of the bird is a listening
one. Itisa swift movement, and will not be
noticed except by the most careful observer.
Now when the bird’s tongue is drawn far in,
it rests between the prongs of the lower mar-
dible, and, pressing upon them, forms a per-
fect connection for receiving the vibrations
imparted thereto.

I was at first of the opinion that in the
listening attitude Picus thrust his tongue
against the wood, but this was error, as I soon
discovered.

ITI.

Turning from the true woodpecker to the
modified species Melanerpes erythrocephalus,
we find some curious facts.

The hairy woodpecker (Picus villosus) is a
much smaller bird than the red-headed spe-
cies (Melanerpes erythrocephulus), yet the
former has the more powerfully fluted bill
and a brain thrown much farther back in its
skull, which is the heavier. The upper man-
dible of the red-head is less pronounced in its
superiority over the lower, than in the case

SOMH HYOID HINTS. 185

of Picus, and it is not so sharply triangular
as that of the genuine woodpecker.

In all of its habits the red-head is interme-
diate between Picus and Colaptes—that is, be-
tween the genuine woodpecker and the
flicker, but, curiously enough, Colaptes has the
hyoid cornua produced till they enter the nos-
tril! Why is this?

The red-head is an expert fly-catcher, a
great fruit-eater, and much given to picking
insects up from the surface of the ground,
but he does not take his food, as a rule, by
pecking into wood.

Colaptes, however, although he does not
peck much in wood, pecks holes in the ground,
and takes therefrom, in the form of grubs,
worms and larve, the greater part of his food.
In this his habit is much like that of the
woodcock or the snipe. His bill, however, is
not soft, flexible, and sensitive, like the
snipe’s, though it is decurved and very little
like that of Picus.

Now it is well known that the olfactory
powers are weak in most birds, and they are
perhaps weakest in the woodpeckers. It is
also known that the gustatory powers of birds
are dull and weak. Add to these facts that
the sense of smell assists that of taste, and
another suggestion arises. Colaptes may have
his hyoid cornua and their attendant wisp of
muscles and nerves thrust into his nostril to
aid him in determining by taste and smell, or
by a modified and specialized sense of touch,
the quality of the food found in the ground !

The dissections required to settle such a
question are of a very minute and difficult
sort, and need not be described.

The sap-sucker (Sphyropicus) is not by habit
an insectivorous bird; his chief food is the sap
and viscous matter lying between the bark
and the wood of living trees, and so his hyoid

136 SOME HYOID HINTS.

cornua are elongated very little, if any, be-
yond the base of the skull. His food is
selected by sight, and he has no need for a
specialized hyoidean apparatus. Indeed all
of the species of woodpeckers that are not de-
pendent upon boring into wood or into the
ground, and that therefore do not have to
locate their food or test its quality without
seeing it, have the hyoid bones less developed
than in Picus.

The protrusion of the tongue is the more
obvious function of this hyoidean peculiarity,
but the more obscure function of aid to the
dull senses of taste and hearing is not there-
fore less important.

It would not be of particular interest in this
connection to go into the minutize of the many
slight variations of the tongue-peculiarity ob-
servable in different species. I have given
the extremes, the mean and, in the instance
of Colaptes, a case of curious intermedist}
specialization (where an extreme might have
been expected like that of Spheropicus) for
meeting the exigency of a singular habit.

It is impossible, in a paper addressed to the
popular understanding, to make minute com-
parisons in anatomy, but the facts upon which
I insist may be formulated as follows:

ist. The picidzean development of the hyoid
cornua in the genus Picus has for its second-
ary function a mechanical and perhaps sen-
sory aid to hearing.

2d. Such development in the genus Colaptes
is in aid of the sense of taste.

So minute and obscure are the nerve lines
of the hyoid sheath, and so complicated are
the wisps of motor nerves controlling the
tongue of the woodpecker, that one may not
speak with perfect knowledge as to where mere
motor action leaves off, and the telegraphy
of sense begins, but it appears to me that to

SOME HYOID HINTS. 137

the ear of Picus the tongue conveys aid, and
from the olfactory organ of Colaptes the
tongue receives aid—that in each case the
hyoid cornua are auxiliary to an organ other-
wise powerless to perform the task required
of it by a narrow and exacting habit of life.
In other words, if Picus could have heard the
worm stir in the wood, we should not have
found his tongue-bones seeking his ear, and
if Colaptes had been blessed with a fine sense
of taste, his nostrils would not have been in-
vaded by his hyoid cornua in quest of aid.

The sheath or nerve-wisp in which the
tongue-bones (hyoid cornua) of Coluptes are
inclosed, runs to near the anterior extremity
of the upper mandible, after passing into the
right nostril. .Kach movement of the bird’s
tongue must be felt in its nasal cavity, there-
fore, and to what extent the gustatory sense
may thereby be aided is not altogether infer-
ence. The extremity of the sheath is nerve-
tissue and muscular fiber, and is obscurely
connected with the tissue lining the nasal
cavity, and this, taken along with the facts
already given, makes it clear to my mind that
the intrusion of the tongue-bones and tongue-
nerves into the olfactory space is not acci-
dental any more than their projection around
the right eye to the ear of Picus is accidental.

To a degree, atrophy and hypertrophy of
the limbs and organs of animals are the out-
come of what may be called hereditary desire
arising out of a need, negative or positive.
A negative need induces atrophy, as where
the need of losing a useless limb slowly with-
ers it by non-use. A positive need induces
hypertrophy, as where the over-development
of a limb is caused by a continuing demand
upon its strength and action.

In all birds the motor nerves of the tongue
pass directly to the brain, and in the wood-

138 SOME HYOID HINTS.

peckers there is a spray of fine nerves passing
from the hyoid sheath all along its course,
and disappearing in the adjoining tissues.

A minute dissection of the head of Picus
villosus shows that an obscure flat band of
fibrous tissue passes over the quadrate bone,
from the end of the hyoid sheath, but not
from the ends of the cornua.

Thus it will be seen that Nature has not
stultified herself in the discrimination between
Picus and Colaptes, in the matter of giving
direction to the posterior wanderings of the
tongue-attachments, but has answered, in the
only safe way, the insistent demand of a
great need in each case. Picus must be able
to hear his prey, and yet if his ears were
sufficiently sensitive, of themselves, for this
purpose, the wood-pounding the bird has to
do would kill him. So Colaptes must take
his food from the ground; but his bill is not
soft and filled with nerves, like the snipe’s,
therefore he must depend upon his tongue,
“which in turn is, alas ! a woodpecker’s tongue,
and cannot be trusted until it has formed a
connection with the olfactory cavity !

The woodpecker’s eyes are immense, in com-
parison with the size of the skull, and have a
power of vision not surpassed by that of the
hawk’s or the kingfisher’s. Whenever his
chosen food can be selected by his eyes, he has
no need for any extraordinary disposition of
the tongue-bones.

In treating the case of Colaptes, I have used
the idea of gustatory aid derived from the nos-
tril, but I doubt if the actual sense of taste
isreally aided directly, though this is far from
impossible. The chief effect of the nostriland
tongue connection may be the registration (by
vibration) of the movements of prey when
caught. Thus when the bird, with its beak
deep in the ground, draws a worm up into its

SOME HYOID HINTS, 139

mouth with its tongue, the worm’s slightest
movement is telegraphed through the tongue
to the sensitive membrane of the nasa! cavity,
and so to the brain.

In this connection it may be interesting to
note that Colaptes, in taking food by pecking
in the ground, rarely needs to thrust its
tongue out very far, as from the nature of the
case the prey must be reached by the bill be-
fore it is captured. Indeed careful observa-
tion has led me to feel quite sure that it is
by the touch of the tongue, and the conse-
quent impression conveyed to the brain
through the hyoid apparatus, that Colaptes
distinguishes a grub from a plant-bulb, or a
worm from a soft root, as he delves in the soil
for his daily food. By an almost precisely
similar, though less roundabout way, the
woodcock and the snipe, the duck and the
goose, distinguish edible from inedible sub-
stances buried under mud and water, where
neither sight nor the sense of smell, as com-
monly defined, can be trusted.

The hyoid cornua of the humming-bird curls
up over the back of the skull, but the tongue
is hollow and sensitive, so that the gustatory
power is probably fairly well developed, and
there is no need of any secondary connection
of the organ with the brain; besides, the hum-
ming-bird doubtless uses its eyes in selecting
its food.

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