Music and Dancing in Nature. 281 
ing objects, witli intervals of watching, when they 
cronch motionless, the eyes flashing and tail waved 
from side to side ; finally, the rush and spring, when 
the playfellow is captured, rolled over on his back 
and worried to imaginary death. Other species of 
the most diverse kinds, in which voice is greatly 
developed, join in noisy concerts and choruses ; 
many of the cats may be mentioned, also dogs and 
foxes, capybaras and other loquacious rodents ; and 
in the howling monkeys this kind of performance 
rises to the sublime uproar of the tropical forest at 
eventide. 
Birds are more subject to this universal joyous 
instinct than mammals, and there are times when 
some species are constantly overflowing with it ; 
and as they are so much freer than mammals, more 
buoyant and graceful in action, more loquacious, 
and have voices so much finer, their gladness shows 
itself in a greater variety of ways, with more regular 
and beautiful motions, and with melody. But every 
species, or group of species, has its own inherited 
form or style of performance ; and, however rude 
and irregular this may be, as in the case of the pre- 
tended stampedes and fights of wild cattle, that is 
the form in which the feeling will always be ex« 
pressed. If all men, at some exceedingly remote 
period in their history, had agreed to express the 
common glad impulse, which they now express in 
such an infinite variety of ways or do not express 
at all, by dancing a minuet, and minuet- dancing 
had at last come to be instinctive, and taken to 
spontaneously by children at an early period, just 
as they take to walking on their hind legs/’ 
