"For instance, the white-throated sparrow or Peabody bird sings a perfect musical phrase which we may harmonize as we please, because it certainly suggests harmony. This is absolutely no more than the bird sings. The musical intervals, the pitch, and the lengths of the notes are all correctly sustained. In other words the bird suggests a complete musical idea. But the little Peabody bird seldom attempts a more difficult or elaborate task. He knows his limitations, and keeping within these, his attempts are musically both consistent and perfect. But let us turn our attention to the more gifted songster of the northern woods, the hermit thrush. His capacity for simple melody, his technical mastery of tone intervals and note values, his phrasing and his brilliancy as a performer, are certainly not exceeded by any vocalist of nature. "But we must again studiously heed the limitations of the bird's idea of music. We are still in the presence of the untamed singer, who is amenable only to his own elastic laws. The hermit thrush starts his song with a prolonged keynote (often it is A) and then springs upwards in thirds and fifths with such rapidity and ease that we are amazed at the accuracy of the performance. Not only are the tones correctly given, but they are embellished with subsidiary or tributary tones. "The last note, C, too faint to be heard at any distance, is rendered in a gyrating, suppressed way, impossible to describe, but comparable to the soft tones of a harmonicon. This note is an excellent example of bird lawlessness regarding music. It is quite antipodal in character to the initial note (A) with which the bird slowly begins, as if desirous to found upon it a solid musical phrase; but he fails most utterly at the last and subsides into an exquisite, elusive, compound tone--I do not know what else to call it--which he rounds off in a plaintive pianissimo. He is not satisfied; he begins the same strain again, now in another key, and with no better success in the final than in his first effort. So he starts again with a variation, this time striking an initial note higher than before. Then he makes another attempt; but still he seems dissatisfied and, after a short rest, three tiny high notes come from his throat, full of perfect melody, as simple as that of the chickadee."