FACULTIES OF THE MIND. 23a 
quated, and our phrascology obsolete; even our present arts 
will be considered rude, and our science infantile *. 
The sounds which are addressed to the ear for the pur- 
pose of communicating thought, are not exclusively pro- 
duced by the organs of respiration. Thus, when a rabbit 
perceives danger, and wishes to give warning to others, it 
does not utter a sound; but, beating the earth with its 
feet, produces a noise, whose meaning its neighbours find 
no difficulty to comprehend. In the insect well known by 
the name of the Death-watch (Anobium), a sound is pro- 
duced by striking its mandibles upon wood, and a similar 
sound is produced in return by another individual when 
within hearing. In many other insects, the noise is produced 
by the friction of the wings against each other, the air, or the 
abdomen. In the Death’s-head Hawk-moth (Sphinx atro- 
pos), Reaumur found that the noise which it emits when 
confined, proceeds from the mouth, and is produced by the 
friction of the palpi against the tongue. In the Tettigo- 
nie, on the other hand, there is an organ seated in the ab- 
domen, and opening on its under surface, containing cells, 
elastic plates, and muscles, by whose motions, sounds, loud 
and disagreeable, are produced +. Ip all these instances, 
the sounds are expressive of feelings, and are intelligible 

® Dr Banrcnray, in reference to this subject, states the truth with pain- 
ful plainness: ‘¢ Writers of taste, who value themselves on the beauty and 
elegance of their diction, must often reflect with painful apprehension, 
on the instability and transient nature of the perishing sounds with which 
their literary fame is connected,” p. 62. Again, ‘¢ It seems to be owing to the 
constant operations of such causes, whose influence can neither be checked 
nor prevented, that no accident ever has occurred, no art ever been discover- 
ed, to preserve the stabiljty of vocal language, to call on the forebodings of 
literary geniuses, and remove the apprehensions, that their laboured elo- 
quence, in a few centuries, must require an interpreter, and the beauties of 
their diction pass unnoticed, without a commentator.” Ib. p. 83. 
+ See Kirsy and Srence’s Introduction to Entomology, ti, p. 405. 
