THE VOICES OF ANIMALS. 397 



ascertained, there is more dumbness in the animal world than is gen- 

 erally supposed. This dumbness, however, is rarely absolute, but rather 

 more an inability to form articulated sounds. 



Every animal of the higher orders is possessed of some sort of tone 

 expressive of pain or joy, and by means of this it can make itself un- 

 derstood by its kind. Fish can produce no sound in the water, be- 

 cause air is lacking as a medium to propagate the waves of sound ; and 

 yet we incline to the belief that the water itself may admit of the 

 forming of some kind of sound-waves, which the fish perhaps may be 

 capable of exciting, and which will be experienced and comprehended 

 by other fish. As far as we are concerned, of course, fish will remain 

 mute, as the element in which they live is one into whose conditions 

 of existence we may never enter, and that to us means death. But 

 even among our domestic animals, the dog heading the list, there 

 reigns, to our ear at least, a dumbness well-nigh absolute, broken only 

 occasionally by faint and forcibly uttered sounds. In very cold and 

 in very hot climates there are certain dog races that never bark, a fact 

 already referred to by Captain Cook in the account of his voyages. In 

 Asia there is a species of dog called colsans which never barks. It is 

 to be found chiefly in the Deccan, in the mountains of Nilgiri and in 

 the woodlands on the coast of Coromandel. Also among the birds, 

 by poets so often styled " the singers of the forest," there are many 

 kinds that are mute. Two varieties of sparrows, the tangara of Bra- 

 zil and the senegali at the Senegal, are said never to emit a sound ; 

 and in Australia there are larks quite similar to those of our own coun- 

 try, but which never sing. 



The real singing of birds is done only in spring-time, to greet anew 

 Nature's awakening. During the rest of the year even the best sing- 

 ers of the woods confine themselves to simple chirping notes of woe or 

 joy. Nicolardot believes that the song of birds may be regarded as 

 the original fount of all music, and according to his view each musical 

 instrument was originally only devised to imitate the voice of some 

 bird. Bringing to bear a considerable knowledge of natural history 

 and perhaps an equal amount of charming fancy, he traces the whole 

 orchestra of to-day back to the voices of birds. He demonstrates that 

 for every instrument — the clarionet, the flute, the oboe, the trombone, 

 the trumpet, and all the rest — a bird may be named that bears the 

 fundamental tone of such instrument in its throat, and which has been 

 copied by man in the making of the instrument. To the nightingale 

 he assigns in this bird-orchestra the part of the organ, and even the 

 rattling of the castanets he would trace to the peculiar noise made by 

 some birds of prey with their bill. 



Besides their songs with which they greet Spring, and their notes 

 of pain and joy, birds have still other sounds which they use only on 

 certain occasions. Many birds, besides the rooster, herald the early 

 dawn and sunrise with certain peculiar notes. Among these are the 



