March 15.—With bird song increasing all round us I have varied the old question, "why do birds sing?" and asked myself, "how do birds sing?"....a question which is quite easy to answer with the aid of the obliging Mr. Webster. If you look up the word Syrinr you will find two meanings given (1) A wind instrument made of reeds tied together—called also pandean pipes (2) The lower larynx in birds. To make the matter even clearer Mr. Webster goes on to say; "In birds there are two larynges, an upper or true, but voiceless, larynx in the usual position behind the tongue, and a lower one....which is the true organ of the voice." This lower larynx is, of course, the Pandean Pipe which Mrs. Browning thought of when she described how the god Pan took a reed to make the first musie;—
"This is the way laughed the great god Pan.
(Laughed while he sate by the river) The only way since the gods began, To make sweet music, they could succeed; Then dropping his mouth to a hole in the reed,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.