TRACES OF VOICES IN FISHES. 445 



voice became proportionately less a feature of our fishes, 

 but was retained in some, and reappears in still stronger 

 development in those connecting links between fishes and 

 higher vertebrates, culminating in the batrachians, where 

 it is perfected by the presence of a larynx. 



Professor J. C. Galton has, in the " Popular Science 

 Review " for October, 1874, most scientifically discussed 

 this whole subject, and a brief quotation from his able 

 paper is a fit ending to my scanty notes on this most in- 

 teresting phase of animal life. He writes : " Not only is 

 there every reason to believe that the majority of sounds 

 produced by fishes are not casual utterances, but are truly 

 voluntary, but there is among such as give vent to them 

 a most remarkable development of the organs of hearing 

 in all essential particulars, for example, in the semicir- 

 cular canals, otoliths and nerves, correlative with the 

 degree of perfection of the instrument. Further than 

 this, as the sounds generally excel in frequency and in- 

 tensity at the breeding season, it will not be unreasonable 

 to regard them granting, as we do, that the chirp of the 

 cricket and the croak of the frog is each in its way an 

 alluring serenade as nuptial hymns, or, to use language 

 ascribed to Plutarch, as * deafening epithalamia.' More 

 than this : seeing that the carp, and others of the same 

 family, have given unmistakable proofs of their aptitude 

 to receive some rudiments of education, and in particular 

 to perceive certain sounds, it can yet be possible that the 

 moral admonitions of a St. Anthony of Padua by many 

 still regarded as a work of supererogation may, no less 

 than the amorous twang of the vesical zither, after all 

 not have fallen upon totally deaf ears." 



