PREHISTORIC ART. 



517 





DOG BARKING FOR JOY. 



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DONKEY BRAYING. 



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GRASSHOPPER CHIRPING. 



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GNAT BUZZING. 



Modem musical works not infrequently reproduce the songs of birds. 

 ''Listen to the nightingule" is an illustration which, however, only 

 serves to show the superiority of the bird over his brother animal, man. 

 The lark, the blackbird, the thrush, all have their songs, which, repeated 

 again and again, are recoguizable and known of all men, while the 

 canary, the mocking bird, and the catbird sing not only their natural 

 songs, but can be taught to sing many variations, if not to execute 

 entirely new melodies. The author has seen a jjiece of music set to 

 imitate a cackling hen aud crowing cock, and all the world remembers 

 Ole Bull's " Barnyard orchestra," as played on his violin. Darwiu 

 reports to have heard a gibbon which modulated his voice to the extent 

 of an octave, aud, according to Savage, the black chimpanzee {Troglo- 

 dytes niger) gathers in troops at certain places aud gives musical con- 

 certs by striking wood of various kinds — that is to say, trees standing, 

 logs lying, or branches spreading — with a rod or pole, keeping time and 

 forming a sort of melody or harmony of the different tones emitted 

 from the object struck. If this be true these would seem to be musicians 

 in the lowest scale and this to have been the most primitive nmsical 

 instrument. 



Musical instruments of percussion are the most simple, and the 

 theory has been accordingly announced that they were the first to 

 have been invented— that is, they were the earliest factors in human 

 culture, and the first to bo used among primitive peoples. The next in 

 order of complexity, and accordingly iu order of invention and evolu- 

 tion, were wind instruments. Rowbotham ' divides them into types, of 

 which his representatives are the drum, the pipe, ami the lyre. Under 



1 History of Music, Book I. 



