which had laid dormant in them for more than 18 centuries. If 

 was their emancipation which afforded them the opportunity ot 

 unfolding and developing their sense and talent for music, and 

 enabled them to excel in every department of the musical 

 art, and to furnish us with performers and creators of music, 

 such as Mendelssohn, Meyerbeer, Eubinstein, Joachim, and many 

 others. Music was an invention. The experiences and attain- 

 ments of one generation of men were handed down by tradition 

 to the next generation, and so progress was made, but animals, 

 learning nothing from the experience of ancestors, made no 

 progress. Music with birds was but speech. Regarding the 

 improvements in music. Dr. Treutler said the instrument within 

 ourselves, which is at once the seat and source of musical per- 

 ception and susceptiblities, our soul, is and has been inherent in 

 man through all time, and has advanced but little, if at all ; but 

 being exercised and trained from early life by better methods 

 and on higher work, it yields proportionately higher and better 

 results. The history of all advance and improvement in the art 

 of music proves this. We have only to think of the reception 

 which Beethoven's choral and other symphonies, and Wagner's 

 operas, met with at the hands of audiences and performers on 

 their first appearance, and compare it with the estimation in 

 which these great works are held now by the public. The 

 musical sense of those days, though by no means of a mean 

 order, was yet unable to grasp and understand the meaning of 

 these great tone poems ; it required the training and education 

 of years to enable our musical faculties to intelligently appreciate 

 these creations of genius. 



The Lecturer inclined to the theory of Professor Weissman, 

 that the f<aculty of music must be regarded as in a manner an 

 outgrowth, a bye-product, of the sense of hearing. Weissman 

 argues that we may regard the musical, and, indeed, every 

 ai'tistic faculty, as the spiritual hand which plays on that part 

 of our inner nature which we call the soul. For our faculty 

 of music consists of two parts, — the organ of hearing and the 

 auditory centre of the brain. The former, the ear, receives 

 the waves of sound, converts them into nerve vibrations, and 

 transmits them to a certain part of the brain,- — the auditory 

 centre, — which converts these nerve vibrations into tone per- 

 ceptions, which are arranged and analysed and combined by 

 the intellect, and so ultimately form that mysterious and potent 

 subtle thing we call music. In animals not only were the sense 

 of hearing and the cerebral auditory centre considerably developed 

 and organised, but they were also able to some extent to in- 

 tellectually comprehend and interpret music itself. 



After instancing the effect of music on certain animals, 

 notably the way war-horses understood bugle calls, Dr. Treutler 



