56 FACULTIES OF BIRDS. 



of nice diversity, the wonder would not have been 

 great. But those who are without ear for music 

 perceive as readily as others the faintest whisper ; 

 they distinguish like them the faintest shades of 

 difference in mere articulations of sound, which con- 

 stitute the varieties of language, not the articulation 

 only, but the differences also of the mere tones of 

 affection or displeasure, grief or gaiety, which are 

 so strikingly analogous to the varied expressions of 

 musical feeling ; and their power of discrimination in 

 every other case in which the judgment can be 

 exercised is not less perfect. Nay, to increase still 

 more the difficulty, they are often as sensible as 

 others of the beauty of series of tones of a different 

 kind; and some of our best poets and declaimers, 

 who, of course, must have had a quick discernment 

 of metrical rhythm, and of the melody of execution, 

 have yet been incapable of distinguishing the musical 

 relations of sounds, as reciprocally high or low, the 

 melody that results from them in certain succession, 

 and the harmony or the discord of their union. 



" That it depends chiefly, or perhaps entirely, on 

 the structure or state of the mere corporeal organ of 

 hearing, which is of a kind, it must be remembered, 

 peculiarly complicated, and therefore susceptible of 

 great original diversity in the parts, and the relations 

 of parts that form it, is very probable ; though the 

 difference of the separate parts themselves, or of their 

 relations to each other, may, to the mere eye, be so 

 minute as never to be discovered by dissection, thus 

 leaving to every future race of inquirers the same 

 difficulty which has perplexed ourselves, and the same 

 difficulty of overcoming it. 



" In the sense of vision, we may remark, there is 

 a species of defect very analogous to the want of 

 musical ear ; a defect which consists in the diffi- 

 culty, or rather the incapacity, of distinguishing some 



