



Produced by Chris Curnow, Joseph Cooper, Keith Edkins,
some images courtesy of The Internet Archive and the Online
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Transcriber's note: Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).


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BIRDS.

ILLUSTRATED BY COLOR PHOTOGRAPHY.



VOL. III. MAY, 1898. NO. 5.



COLOR IN MUSIC.

 "No ladder needs the bird, but skies
    To situate its wings,
  Nor any leader's grim baton
    Arraigns it as it sings.
  The implements of bliss are few--
    As Jesus says of Him,
 'Come unto me,' the moiety
    That wafts the cherubim."
         --EMILY DICKINSON.



OH, Music! voice inspired of all our joys and sorrows, of all our hopes and
disappointments, to thee we turn for life, for strength and peace. The
choristers of Nature--the birds--are our teachers. How free, how vital, how
unconstrained! The bird drops into song and delicious tones as easily as he
drops from the bough through the air to the twig or ground. To learn of the
bird has been found to be a truthful means whereby children's attention and
interest may be held long enough to absorb the sense of intervals in pitch,
notation on the staff, and rythms.

In teaching a child, it is obvious that the desire to learn must be kept
widely awake, and heretofore black notes on five lines and four spaces,
with heiroglyphics at the beginning to denote clef, and figures to indicate
the rhythm of the notes, have never interested children. But now, color and
the bird with its egg for a note, telegraph wires for the staff, and
swinging the pulsing rhythm instead of beating the time, has charmed
children into accomplishment of sight