SOUNDS FEOM ANIMATE NATURE. 



A TREATISE on the beauties of nature would be very 

 imperfectly accomplished if nothing were written of 

 sounds. The hearing is indeed the most intellectual of 

 our senses, though from the sight w^e undoubtedly de- 

 rive the most pleasure. Hearing is also more intimately 

 connected with the imagination than any other sense; 

 and a few words of speech or a few notes of music may 

 produce the most vivid emotion or awaken the most 

 ardent passion. At all seasons and in all places the 

 sounds no less than the visible things of nature affect us 

 with pleasure or with pain. Everywhere does the song 

 of a bird or the note of an insect, the cry of an animal 

 or other sound from the animate world, come to the ear 

 with messages of the past, conveying to the mind some 

 joyful or plaintive remembrance. 



Sounds are the medium through which many ideas as 

 well as sensations are communicated to us by nature ; 

 and we cannot say how large a proportion of those which 

 seem to rise spontaneously in the mind are suggested by 

 some animal, through its cries of joy or complaint. There 

 is hardly a rational being who is not alive to these sugges- 

 tions, varying with his habits of life, especially those of 

 his early years. Some persons do not purposely listen to 

 the voices of insects, and seem almost unaware of the 

 existence of these sounds. Yet even these apathetic per- 

 sons are unconsciously affected by them. We attend so 

 little to the subjects of our consciousness that we can 

 seldom trace to their source any of our most ordinary 



