COUNTRY SOUNDS 105 
are subdued. There is, indeed, the roll of the 
thunder, the battery of the angry sea, the howling 
of the storm, the ominous crash of avalanche and 
landslip, the roar and cannonading of the forest 
fire, the groaning and travailing of the earthquake, 
and the booming of the cataract, but all these are 
more or less unusual. What we are more accus- 
tomed to, what we have come to love, are gentler, 
subtler sounds with some music in them *—the sob 
of the sea, the sough of the wind in the wood, the 
song of the purling brook, the crickle-crackle of the 
brittle, withered grass and shriveling herbage, 
the sigh with which the parched ground receives 
the heavy rain, and the little sound that the breeze 
evokes when it rings the sun-dried bluebells by the 
wayside, or makes the aspen leaves quiver, or sets 
the heather tinkling, or gives a whisper of gossip 
to the bulrushes beside the lake. 
It always seems worthy of remembrance that for 
many millions of years inorganic sounds were 
the only sounds upon the earth, for it was not until 
living creatures had been cradled and fostered for 
many ons that they found voice. Insects were 
the first to break the silence, and, as is well known, 
their sound-production is almost wholly instrumen- 
tal. Buzzing or humming is mainly due to rapid 
vibrations of the wings, which often strike the air 
more than a hundred times in a second, but there is 
sometimes a special quivering instrument near the 
1 This article was published before Sir Francis Darwin’s 
hook entitled Rural Sounds (1917). 
