246 FACULTIES OF BIRDS. 
Sir William Jones, in his curious dissertation on 
the musical modes of the Hindoos, says, “I have 
been assured by a credible eyewitness that two 
wild antelopes used often to come from their woods 
to the place where a more savage beast—Sirajud- 
daulah—entertained himself with concerts, and that 
they listened to the strains with an appearance of 
pleasure, till the monster, in whose soul there was 
no music, shot one of them to display his skill in 
archery.’* 
The anatomical structure and conformation which 
constitutes what is called a musical ear, remains 
hitherto unknown; but if we may judge from the 
songs of birds, it must differ considerably in them 
from what it does in man, as their musical scale 
cannot be adapted to any of ours; though Mrs. Pi- 
0zzi’s account of the musical pigeon, as well as the 
fact of bulfinches and other birds learning to pipe 
waltzes and other airs, proves that they can accom- 
modate their ear to scales differing from the one in 
which they naturally sing. 
Smell in Birds.—As the sensation of smell, so far 
as we can judge, seems to depend upon the diffu- 
sion in the air of very subtile effluvia, or a principle 
called aroma, hitherto but little understood, it is ob- 
vious that objects cannot be perceived at so great 
a distance by smell as by hearing or vision, which 
do not depend on materials derived from the ob- 
jects themselves. The discovery of distant water 
by the camel, however, seems to depend on the 
sense of smell; and, if we are to credit the author- 
ities given by Bryant, the ass has a similar faculty 
of discovering distant water by the smell. 
These two instances of the camel and the ass, 
however, seem to be solitary, for we have no good 
evidence to prove that other animals can discover 
very distant objects by the smell, though the fact 
* Asiatic Researches. 
