apparent attempt to unite once more in chorus, but this is far from being so loud or so general as in the morning.  The little birds which I have classed in the fourth division are a very important accompaniment to the anthem of dawn, their notes, though short, serving agreeably to fill up the pauses made by the other musicians.  Thus, the hair-bird (Fringilla Socialis) has a sharp and trilling note, without any modulation, and not at all melodious, when heard alone; but in the morning it is the chief harmonizer of the whole chorus, and serves, more than any other voice, to give unity and symphony to the multitude of miscellaneous parts.

There are not many birds whose notes could be accurately described upon the gamut.  The nearest approach we can make to accuracy is to give some general idea of their time and modulation.  Their musical intervals can be distinguished but with difficulty, on account of the rapidity of their utterance.  I have often attempted to transcribe some of their notes upon the musical scale, but I am persuaded that such sketches can be only approximations to literal correctness.  As different individuals of the same species sing very differently, the notes, as transcribed from the song of one individual, will never exactly represent the song of another.  If we listen attentively, however, to a number of songs, we shall detect in all of them a theme, as it is termed by musicians, of which the different individuals of the species warble their respective variations.  Every song is, technically speaking, a fantasia constructed upon this theme, from which none of the species ever departs.

It is very generally believed that the singing-birds are confined to temperate latitudes, and that the tropical birds have not the gift of song.  That this is an error is apparent from the testimony of travellers, who speak of the birds in the Sandwich Islands and New Zealand as singing delightfully, and some fine songsters are occasionally imported in cages from tropical climates.  The origin of this notion may be explained in several ways.  It is worthy of notice that within the tropics the singing season of different species of birds does not occur at the same time.  One species may be musical in the spring, another in summer, and others in autumn and winter.  When one species, therefore, has begun to sing, another has ceased, so that, at whatever time of the year the traveller stops, he hears but few birds engaged in song.

In the temperate latitudes, on the contrary, as soon as the birds arrive, they commence building their nests, and become musical at the same time.  If a stranger from a tropical climate should arrive in this country in the spring, and remain here during the months of May and June, he would hear more birds singing together than he ever heard at once in his own clime; but were he to arrive about the middle of July, when the greater number of our birds have discontinued their songs, he would probably, if he knew the reputation of the Northern birds, marvel a little at their silence.  If there are as many birds singing at one time during the whole year, in the hot climates, as we hear in this country in the latter half of summer, the greater average would appear to be on the side of the former.