4 RUSTIC SOUNDS 



This could only have been written by one 

 perfectly familiar with the art of whistle-making. 

 But it seems to have been misunderstood by the 

 reviewer, who says that he " once came upon one of 

 these small iEolian harps in a wooded isle in the 

 ' Land of Afternoon,' "... and decided " that 

 it was a work of superstition by Indian hands." 

 As an iEolian harp is a stringed instrument sounded 

 by the wind, and a whistle belongs to the very 

 distinct class of musical things sounded by human 

 breath, I can only suppose that the reviewer has 

 misunderstood the poem. 



I cannot leave the Canadian poet without a 

 reference to the beautiful line, (" A robin piping in 

 the dark alone.") A Canadian robin must surely 

 make a song like ours, who seems also to sing 

 in parenthesis. 



The other form of rustic pipe that pleased me 

 was a sort of oboe made from a dandelion stalk 

 by squeezing it at one end. It had a rough 

 nasal note, which could be controlled by holes cut 

 in the stalk and stopped with the fingers. This 

 again was but brief satisfaction, for the two halves 

 of the reed soon curled outwards and ceased to 

 speak. In later life this curling outwards was 

 made use of in my work in the physiology of plants. 

 I like to remember that my primaeval oboe gave me 

 the idea. 



The village boys made ' musics ' by fixing 

 strips of laurel leaf into a spUt stick, and blowing 

 violently into them, which set the leaf vibrating 

 and made a coarse scream, but this instrument we 

 despised, and I think rightly, for it had none of the 



