396 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



THE VOICES OF ANIMALS. 



By DETLEV VON GEYEKN. 



THE whole world is one wondrous blending of the most varied 

 voices, flowing together and intermingling. This unison of sound 

 forms the great tone of life on our globe, and chimes in harmoniously 

 with the poets' and philosophers' music of the spheres. The existence 

 of such a music is not to be denied, even from a purely realistic point 

 of view. If from a distance one were to listen to the thousand noises 

 and sounds of all kinds that arise from the throbbing of life in a large 

 town, these all would seemingly be lost in one low hum resembling 

 the vibrations of a huge tuning-fork, and appearing as but a single 

 tone. Even thus the entire volume of sound coming from our planet 

 would seem as a single tone to one soaring far above the earth, and 

 capable of hearing through vast distances. Similar sounds would 

 arise from other worlds and thus would be produced a veritable 

 music of the spheres, sounding on into the infinite. 



Bernardin de St. Pierre has written a very curious book on the 

 harmonies of Nature. Palissy has made numerous ingenious observa- 

 tions on the melodies of plants and trees, which Lamartine, through 

 his book on " Great Men," has rescued from oblivion. 



It is a well-known fact that every metal has a sound peculiar to 

 itself. So, too, the voices of animals have at all times played an im- 

 portant part in Nature — now looked upon by man with superstitious 

 awe, and anon observed with the eye of Science. 



In olden times the priests and the tillers of the soil were the ones 

 to pay attention to the voices of animals — the priests, to be guided by 

 them in their oracles ; the peasants, to learn of changes in the weather 

 and coming storms. It seems rather strange that the observation and 

 the understanding of the voices of animals have become more and more 

 of a lost art with the advance of civilization, so called ; and it appears 

 almost an anomaly that in these times a scholar like M. Louis Nico- 

 lardot, of Paris, should turn his attention, with all the thoroughness 

 of science, yet in a most charming and entertaining manner, to a 

 study of the voices of Nature. He has done this in a work entitled 

 " La Fontaine and the Human Comedy." 



La Fontaine endows Nature with the voice of man, to mirror the 

 manners, the faults, and the vices of mankind. Nicolardot, however, 

 has traced the true and real significance of the voices of Nature, and 

 shows — at times in a surprising manner — that these voices of Nature 

 often express more and bear a deeper meaning than even the fancy of 

 the great fable-writers, from iEsop down to La Fontaine, has ascribed 

 to them. It is very interesting to study more particularly the animal 

 world with reference to its various voices, and to follow out the mean- 

 ing of these voices in the great concert of Nature. As Nicolardot has 



