244 MAMMALIAN MUSIC 



Music the concord of sweet sounds harmony 

 music as an art, which has been followed and per- 

 fected during thousands of years, is immeasurably 

 above the best the lower animals have, since theirs 

 is not an art but an instinct. 



So we think and say, but it is not quite so. We 

 see that it is not, when we find that some song birds 

 with highly-developed vocal organs learn their songs 

 from others as a rule from the adults of their own 

 species; also that they imitate and adopt notes and 

 phrases that please them in the songs of other species. 

 And this carried so far that in some species almost 

 all individuals have their own original song or songs. 

 Thus, when we speak of the " artistry of the night- 

 ingale," we are probably expressing a literal truth. 

 But just now we are concerned only with the music 

 of the mammalians, man included. 



No doubt man, compared with many of his poor 

 relations, is in many ways a poor creature, but his 

 big brains, and hands to do the brains' biddings, 

 have lifted him infinitely above them in various ways, 

 and in none more than in music. He is at the head 

 of the highest class of vertebrates, the highest division 

 in the organic scale; yet, oddly enough, in music 

 these highest (man excepted) are lowest, since even 

 frogs and toads and grasshoppers put them to shame. 



The mammalian music generally, that is to say 

 when there is anything in the sounds emitted which 

 can be called music, is of the most primitive type, 

 and consists mainly of the excited cries of the beast 

 slightly modified to serve a new purpose. The purpose, 



