208 DIVERSIONS OF A NATURALIST 



no mean performers in this way, whilst cats, deer, and 

 other large animals are " singers," of a kind, when stirred 

 by mate-hunger. The monkeys chatter and make 

 various vocal sounds, but the gibbons and man-like 

 apes produce excessively loud and penetrating cries. 

 These cries, though sometimes of fine note and repeated 

 rhythmically (as in the gibbons and chimpanzees), have 

 not the character of song. The beginnings of song in 

 mankind are lost in the mist of ages. The Australian 

 black-fellows chant and dance with rhythmic precision 

 and a certain kind of melancholy cadence, but they 

 never attempt to fascinate the other sex by the use of 

 the voice (nor, so far as is known, in any other way), and, 

 indeed, there is a vast interval between their vocal per- 

 formances and the love-songs of modern civilized races. 

 Man has not inherited singing from his animal ancestry, 

 but has re-invented it for himself. His real knowledge 

 and command of " music " is actually a novelty which 

 has sprung into existence within the last few hundred 

 years. 



There is no doubt that animals of the same species 

 are attracted to one another by smell, and that distinct 

 species have distinct smells. Further, there is no doubt 

 that in many cases the special smell of either sex 

 attracts the other. But modern man has so nearly lost 

 the sense of smell — why it is difficult to say, excepting 

 that it is because it was not of life-saving value to him 

 — that it is very difficult for us to estimate properly the 

 significance of perfumes and odours. We know that the 

 dog has what to us seems a marvellous power of tracking 

 and recognizing by smell, and that other animals appear 

 to be similarly endowed, though most usually we cannot 

 perceive the smell at all which they recognize and follow. 

 It appears that nearly all the hairy quadrupeds have 



