CHAr. XIX.] MUSICAL TOWERS. 315 



to Sir Duncan Gibb, 26 the voice differs in the different 

 races of mankind; and with the natives of Tartary, 

 China, etc., the voice of the male is said not to differ so 

 much from that of the female, as in most other races. 



The capacity and love for singing or music, though 

 not a sexual character in man, must not here be passed 

 over. Although the sounds emitted by animals of all 

 kinds serve many purposes, a strong case can be made 

 out, that the vocal organs were primarily used and per- 

 fected in relation to the propagation of the species. In- 

 sects and some few spiders are the lowest animals which 

 voluntarily produce any sound; and this is generally 

 effected by the aid of beautifully-constructed stridulating 

 organs, which are often confined to the males alone. The 

 sounds thus produced consist, I believe in all cases, of the 

 same note, repeated rhythmically ; 27 and this is sometimes 

 pleasing even to the ears of man. Their chief, and in 

 some cases exclusive use appears to be either to call or to 

 charm the opposite sex. 



The sounds produced by fishes are said in some cases 

 to be made only by the males during the breeding-season. 

 All the air-breathing Vertebrata necessarily possess an 

 apparatus for inhaling and expelling air, with a pipe capa- 

 ble of being closed at one end. Hence when the primeval 

 members of this class were strongly excited and their 

 muscles violently contracted, purposeless sounds would 

 almost certainly have been produced ; and these, if they 

 proved in any way serviceable, might readily have been 

 modified or intensified by the preservation of properly- 

 adapted variations. The Amphibians are the lowest Ver- 

 tebrates which breathe air ; and many of these animals, 

 namely, frogs and toads, possess vocal organs, which are 



26 ' Journal of the Anthropolog. Soc.' April, 1869, pp. lvii., lxvi. 



27 Dr. Scudder, " Notes on Stridulation," in ' Proc. Boston Soc. of 

 Nat. Hist' vol. xi. .April, 1868. 



