COUNTRY SOUNDS 105 



are subdued. There is, indeed, the roll of the 

 thunder, the battery of the angry sea, the howling 

 of the storm, the ominous crash of avalanche and 

 landslip, the roar and cannonading of the forest 

 fire, the groaning and travailing of the earthquake, 

 and the booming of the cataract, but all these are 

 more or less unusual. What we are more accus- 

 tomed to, what we have come to love, are gentler, 

 subtler sounds with some music in them 1 the sob 

 of the sea, the sough of the wind in the wood, the 

 song of the purling brook, the crickle-crackle of the 

 brittle, withered grass and shriveling herbage, 

 the sigh with which the parched ground receives 

 the heavy rain, and the little sound that the breeze 

 evokes when it rings the sun-dried bluebells by the 

 wayside, or makes the aspen leaves quiver, or sets 

 the heather tinkling, or gives a whisper of gossip 

 to the bulrushes beside the lake. 



It always seems worthy of remembrance that for 

 many millions of years inorganic sounds were 

 the only sounds upon the earth, for it was not until 

 living creatures had been cradled and fostered for 

 many aeons that they found voice. Insects were 

 the first to break the silence, and, as is well known, 

 their sound-production is almost wholly instrumen- 

 tal. Buzzing or humming is mainly due to rapid 

 vibrations of the wings, which often strike the air 

 more than a hundred times in a second, but there is 

 sometimes a special quivering instrument near the 



1 This article was published before Sir Francis Darwin's 

 book entitled Rural Sounds (1917). 



