UNKNOWN TONGUES. 257 



terror with which early travellers spoke of the wondrous 

 gestures used among eastern nations, where the feasted 

 guest from the west was often startled to find that a 

 wave of the hand, which had passed unnoticed before his 

 eyes, had been an order to behead an offender. And yet 

 we ought, in our day, to have learned to think most hum- 

 bly, indeed, of our own imperfect senses. Who guessed 

 that there was a world of suns and stars in the heavens 

 before the telescope unfolded its wonders'? Were we not 

 all startled with the Brahmin, whose laws forbid him to 

 eat animal food, and to whom the merciless microscope 

 revealed in his cup of pure water a host of living be- 

 ings 1 If we had instruments for the ear, as we have 

 for the eye, who knows what we might hear, though we 

 should never reach the fabled power of the Eastern 

 magician, who saw "the grass grow and heard the fleas 

 coughing." But we might surely expect to learn some 

 of these now utterly unknown tongues, and to discover 

 for instance, the mysterious language which ants and bees 

 speak to each other with their antennae. Observations and 

 study would soon add largely to our stock of knowledge. 

 We have all noticed how still and silent nature appears, 

 at sultry noon, when a feeling akin to awe creeps over us, 

 and a magic slumber seems to seize and enchain whatever 

 is living. But, even then, there remains an all-pervading 

 sound, a restless humming and fluttering, close to the 

 ground. In every bush, in the cracked bark of trees, and in 

 the earth, undermined by insects, life is still audible ; voices 

 are still heard, low and faint, perceived only by the watchful 

 ear and the reverent mind of the true votary of nature. 



