THE SETTING DOWN OF BIRDS' SONGS. [To TUB EDITOR OF
TDB "SPICCTLTOR.1 SIR,—Last week you printed a setting down of the skylark's song by Charles d'Orleans. It is extremely pretty, and an excellent imitation of the bird's singing, for it has all the incoherency and insistence of the skylark's song. Do you know these lines taken from the thrush ?—
" Did he do it? did he do it ? Come and see, come and see, Knee-deep, knee-deep, Cherry sweet, cherry sweet, Tome! tome! to me !"
Gilbert White, in one of his letters, speaks of the thrush's note
that sounds like "kneep-deep." The old English nickname "Philype Sparowe" for that bird was evidently taken from its note. It was a pleasant England that gave Christian names to the birds :—Jack Daw, Jenny Wren, Robin Redbreast, Will Wagtail, and Philype Sparowe. The old English name for dabchick is the dip-chick, and the moorhen is the mere-hen. It is more difficult to trace the meaning of "the Nope" for the bullfinch. Yet it expresses the bird to a great extent. Andrew Marvell writes of the woodpecker as the "hewel," from " hew-hole."—I am, Sir, &c.,
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