246 FACULTIES OP 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 w r hat it does in man, as their musical scale 

 cannot be adapted to any of ours ; though Mrs. Pi- 

 ozzi'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 the}'- 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. 



