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ON THE EFFECTS OF MUSIC, &C. 



same species*. Having- said thus much upon music in general, I shall 

 now proceed to bring- forward instances illustrative of my subject. 



Of the repulsive effects of music upon animals there is an amusing 

 story in a volume of the London Magazine for 1825, which I here 

 transcribe : "A soldier, who had obtained a passport to go to England 

 from Ireland, being fatigued, sat down in a wood, and commenced eating 

 some victuals which he had brought with him ; but suddenly he was 

 surprised by the appearance of two or three wolves, who approached 

 towards him, and to whom he threw, for the sake of ensuring their 

 friendship, bit after bit of his bread and cheese until he had no more to 

 give ; and then, as the wolves began to approach nearer, he knew not 

 what to do to appease them otherwise than by playing an air upon his 

 bag pipes ; but he had no sooner commenced than to his astonishment 

 they all scampered away. ' The deuce take you all !' cried he ; ' had I 

 known that you loved music so well, you should have had it before 

 dinner." Sparrman furnishes us with an anecdote of a trumpeter, who 

 by a similar expedient saved himself from falling a prey to a prowling 

 hyaena. " One night, at a feast near the Cape, a trumpeter, who had got 

 himself well filled with liquor, was carried out of doors in order to cool 

 and sober him. The scent of him soon attracted a spotted hyaena, 

 which threw him on his back, and carried him away to Table Mountain? 

 thinking him a corpse, and consequently a fair prize. In the mean 

 time, however, our drunken musician awaked sufficiently sensible to 

 know the danger of his situation, and to sound the alarm with his 

 trumpet, which he carried fastened to his side. The beast, as may be 

 easily imagined, was not less frightened in its turn." From a notice in 

 " Goldsmith's Animated Nature," it appears that crickets are frightened 

 from houses by the sound of music, as he states, that a woman who 

 detested their chirping had her residence accidentally rid of these 

 objects of her dislike, by the playing of a band of music engaged for 

 the amusement of her friends on the occasion of a wedding. Fish* 

 it seems, are usually frightened by music ; a circumstance of which the 

 Chinese avail themselves for the purpose of making their finny prey 



* For instances of the indifference and the respect of various domesticated ani- 

 mals for the music of the trump-marine, vide " Alphabet of Zoology," page 113. 

 We must not, however, j udge of the degrees of musical taste respectively possessed, 

 by the animals there mentioned, as they might have been differently affected by 

 other instruments, or by other tunes upon even the same instrument — J. F. 



