224 CAN THE LOWEK ANIMALS CONVERSE? 



footfall of a carnivorous crab or the approach of a 

 shoal of mackerel. 



It seems, then, wise for us to hesitate before pro- 

 nouncing any animal to be mute simply because we 

 cannot hear it utter any sound. Zoophytes and 

 crustaceans have been proved to possess hearing 

 organs ; it does not follow that, inhabiting a different 

 medium from ours, they can perceive the sounds 

 whereof we are conscious; but some sounds, though 

 inaudible to us, they must of a certainty perceive, and 

 possibly have the power of communicating audibly 

 with each other, although we cannot hear them. 



Some such train of thought passed through my 

 mind as I sat lately one calm autumn morning beside 

 a sequestered inlet of the sea and listened to the cries 

 of several hundred seagulls busily feeding among 

 drifts of seaware cast up by the equinoctial gales. 

 They were chiefly the blackheaded gull (Larus ridi- 

 bivndus), which parts with its black, or rather chocolate, 

 head at this season, and the common gull (Larus 

 canus). It was an unceasing babel of sound, in which 

 rnethought I could recognise the expression of content, 

 irritation, inquiry, and other emotions. To my ear 

 it seemed inarticulate ; yet not one whit more so than 

 the noise of a human crowd. Many and many a time 

 it has occurred to me when ascending the stairs at a 

 London evening party or standing in the fishmarket of 

 Lisbon that the jangle of voices conveyed no more 

 intelligence to a listener outside the crowd than does 

 the cawing of a rookery, the bleating of a flock of 

 sheep, or the clangour of Homer's wild geese on reedy 



