242 FACULTIES OF BIRDS. 
many well-attested instances of a delicate ear in 
species by no means remarkable for vocal execution. 
Madame Piozzi gives an account of a tame pigeon, 
which answered by gesticulation to every note of a 
harpsichord. As often as she began to play, the 
pigeon hurried to the concert with every indication 
of rapturous delight. A false note produced in the 
bird evident tokens of displeasure, and, if frequently 
repeated, it lost all temper and tore her hands.* 
A no less remarkable instance of the effect of 
music on a pigeon is related by Lockman in his re- 
flections upon operas, prefixed to his musical drama 
of Rosalinda. Being at the house of a Cheshire 
gentleman, whose daughter was a fine performer on 
the harpsichord, he observed a pigeon, which, when- 
ever the young lady played the song of “* Speri se” 
in Handell’s opera of Admetus, would descend from 
an adjacent dovecot to the room window where she 
sat, and listen with every indication of pleasure till 
the song was finished, when it uniformly returned 
to the dovecot. 
M. Le Cat, holding the theory that the cochlea 
or snail-shell of the ear is the organ which perceives 
harmony and which is wanting in birds, yet admits 
birds to be the most musical of all animals, and to 
have an exquisite hearing, “ because,” he says, “their 
heads are almost entirely sonorous like a bell, owing 
to their not being involved in complicated muscles, 
as are the heads of other animals. Hence must 
they necessarily be agitated by the sounds which pre- 
sent themselves. The labyrinth of their ear being 
very sonorous, is sufficient for this end. The most 
simple grot will echo back a musical air; but if, to 
this excellent disposition of hearing in birds, nature 
had added the cochlea, they would have been much 
more sensible of harmonious modulations. They 
would have had a passion for harmony, as almost 
®* Letters from France and Italy. 
