As I was following the course of a mountain stream through the leafless woods early in April, the silence was broken by a strange musical alarm. It was the Louisiana water-thrush, but might have been the pipes of Pan, so wild and woodland was it. The first notes were high and startlingly loud and clear, while the song descended the scale and became softer and softer till it died away. This is one of the bird voices that are untamed, that seem to belong to impersonal Nature. It is wholly savage--a piece of the wilderness, untouched by the presence of man. These voices do not strike the human and sympathetic chords, but ally one with the wilderness. Such are the cry of the loon, the melody of the ruby kinglet and the song of the winter wren. The kinglet's song has a cadence unlike any other, reminding one of water murmuring underground, and for some reason a classic suggestion, as of faun and satyr. It is more truly _sylvan_ than any other--sylvan in the old Greek sense, so elusive and shy it is, so mysterious. Such voices give no evidence of self-consciousness; they are as impersonal as the winds or as the murmuring stream. But with the catbird, the thrasher and the mocking-bird, pre-eminently vocalists, there is a set and declamatory method which has the appearance of affectation. Their songs are brilliant and elaborately phrased, but they lack spontaneity, and in listening to them one wishes they had put their powers to a different use. The thrasher is particularly self-conscious and stagey, and yet he has a glorious voice. No bird has a finer _quality_ of tone than he shows in some of his notes--clear, mellow, vibratory as in the voices of really great tenors. It is that quality which Nature alone supplies and no cultivation nor perfection of method can give. When he speaks to his mate in an undertone his voice would melt a heart of stone. There is a time, however, when the catbird rises above any suspicion of self-consciousness and is transported, and the listener with him, in a reverie of exceeding beauty. It is a wondrous love-song, an incomparable madrigal, blending with the morning sunshine and the first green leaves of the alders, soft and low as faint murmurings of a stream, a fluid melody uttered for chosen ears.