THE SYMPHONY OF VOICES 



No description of the voices of Brazil must omit the Frogs. Their 

 concert is in many neighbourhoods as constant an accompaniment 

 of all other sounds as is the seething of the sea along the shore. 

 Brazil is the land of frogs, and almost half the species of the order 

 live here. In the next chapter we shall see how variously these 

 batrachians seek to adapt themselves to the conditions of life which 

 their environment offers them. 



In Brazil one can hardly say that the frogs croak. They bring 

 forth every variety of tone : they roar, hammer, grunt, trill, rattle 

 and whistle. In the rainy season in Pernambuco, during the months 

 of the European summer, the frogs' concert is at its loudest. When 

 in July I travelled from Recife to Olinda, on crossing the belt of 

 mangrove-swamp I heard from every side a clear cool whistle, hiiut, 

 and I found this pretty and not too obtrusive music positively 

 pleasing ; it harmonized so perfectly with the landscape of bush and 

 standing water with the open sea behind them. The Whistling Frog, 

 a small species with a pointed nose, I was able to observe more 

 closely on the monastery farm at Olinda. This frog lives in holes, 

 and if of an evening one goes cautiously across a meadow one 

 can often catch sight of him at the entrance to a mouse's hole, 

 into which he shrinks back at once when aware of danger. Once, 

 when a Whistling Frog was whistling merrily and indefatigably in 

 a Pitanga bush, I crept quietly closer, imitating his whistle; he 

 answered me every time, and we piped a lively duet. If I did not 

 quite strike the pitch there was a deeper, rather hoarse answer, as 

 though the frog were laughing at its unskilful mimic. 



Another frog constantly uttered a cheery Hoi, hoi, so loudly, and 

 with such a human accent, that I kept on thinking that this time I 

 was really listening to a human voice. Sometimes too the call sounded 

 Uke Pfui, and I was told in the monastery that a Brother who had 

 newly arrived from Europe once decided, as he was feeling the heat 

 excessively, to bathe in the stream that flows past the monastery 

 farm. But when he had undressed he heard cries of Pfui, pfui! on 

 every side, so that he hastily threw on some clothing and ran 

 away ! 



In the straw of the thatched roofs lives the little Rattle-frog. 

 Sitting on the verandah, one always hears its voice before rain falls ; 

 it sounds as if someone were rubbing two sticks together. Once I 

 caught one of these frogs and took it to my room in a glass. It pressed 

 itself so closely against the earth at the bottom of the glass that I 

 could scarcely distinguish it; however, it took the first opportunity 



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