COUNTRY SOUNDS 109 



pleasant trill in it, which the male raises to a higher 

 power in spring; among the furze-bushes beside 

 the dry wall the stonechats seem to " chap " the 

 stones together; the peewits cry plaintively from 

 the farmer's fields; as we take a short cut across 

 the heathery "preserve," grouse after grouse pro- 

 claims our trespass with a ridiculously silly cachin- 

 nation kok-kok-kok; but best of all we like " the 

 moan of doves from immemorial elms/' 



It is only in manuals of psychology that we get 

 pure sensations and pigeon-holed perceptions, for 

 around all the country-sounds that have become 

 dear to us there have gathered memories, associa- 

 tions, ideas, and we hear with more than the hearing 

 of the ear. There are wonderful " wireless " mes- 

 sages which the imagination can catch. As we walk 

 at nightfall across the common, noiselessly we think, 

 a dog barks just once or twice from a cottage door 

 half a mile away, and then, before the utter quietness 

 is resumed, we hear the children turn in bed, the 

 click-clack of their mother's knitting-needles, the 

 rustle of the newspaper which the shepherd is read- 

 ing by the fireside ; and we see back into prehistoric 

 times when man, whose life depended on recogniz- 

 ing and interpreting sounds, began to evolve the first 

 cousin of a wolf into the trusty guardian of his herds 

 and hearth. So is it with the other familiar country 

 sounds; we hear not them alone, but what they are 

 symbols and sympathetic echoes of; for man is 

 ever reading- himself into the so-called outer world. 

 It is his particular magic to hear in the lark's 



