SINGING MICE 247 



mouse music has been likened to a bird-like warb- 

 ling, and it does slightly resemble the shrill twittered 

 song of some small finch, but the reader will get a 

 better idea of it by imagining the sound produced by 

 a manikin the size of a mouse playing on a miniature 

 piccolo. Once only have I succeeded in hearing it 

 properly, and that was in a house in Cornwall 

 where the family were much troubled to hear this 

 piccolo playing behind the wainscot, thinking it 

 perhaps a communication from another world. 



There is, however, no doubt that the vocal organ 

 is more highly developed in the rodents, especially 

 in some small species, than in other animals. They 

 come nearest to the birds, and it is a wonder to me 

 that the most bird-like of them all in its arboreal 

 habits, swift motions and volatile mind, should be 

 inferior in voice to many terrestrial species — the poor 

 groundlings. One would like to hear of a singing as 

 well as of a flying squirrel. 



Unfortunately we know next to nothing of the 

 small animals of a greater portion of the earth — 

 Africa and Asia, let us say. From America we have 

 heard of one musical mouse of the genus Hesperomys^ 

 described by a good observer, the Rev. S. Lockwood. 

 Let us indulge the hope that in due time, in another 

 century or so, our travelling naturalists will have 

 finished their collecting and cataloguing and begin 

 to pay some attention to the habits of the creatures, 

 and to listen to the sounds they emit. 



The gibbon has been described more than once as 

 the one monkey with a musical voice as well as a 



