58 FACULTIES OF BIRDS. 



no pleasure from music, as in those who are not 

 ticklish, there is a rapid return of the nervous organ 

 after each separate touch or pressure in the one case ; 

 and each separate tone in tiie other case produces its 

 particular effect, that effect which it would have 

 produced in all if unaccompanied by any other tone 

 in music, or slight pressure in tickling, but that a 

 succession of these produces no effect different from 

 that which each would have produced singly. A 

 certain interval is necessary for distinct hearing in 

 every case ; and before this interval has passed, the 

 auditory nerves in this case may be imagined to be 

 quiescent, or nearly quiescent. 



" In an inquiry of this sort all which is necessary 

 is to account for the mere original defect of pleasure ; 

 since if the relations of notes, as reciprocally high or 

 low, never gave any delight, the ear having no object 

 of interest in these successions, would soon habitually 

 neglect them, and at length cease altogether to dis- 

 tinguish them, attending only to the verbal meaning 

 of sounds, and not to their tone ; in the same manner 

 as we pay little attention to another relative difference 

 of voices, as more or less loud, unless when the dif- 

 ference is very considerable, and not in those common 

 differences of intensity which distinguish every voice 

 in conversation from every other voice ; or as after 

 living long in a province, the dialect of which is 

 distinguished by any accentual peculiarities, we at 

 last become unconscious of these, and hear the words, 

 as it were, stripped of their peculiarity of tone. In 

 what is termed the cultivation of a musical ear, how- 

 ever, we have not an analogy merely, but a direct 

 proof of this influence of habit. 



" That the ear may be improved by cultivation, 

 or, in other words, by nice attention to the differences 

 of musical sounds, every one knows ; and if this 

 attention can enable us, even in mature life, to dis- 



