1 16 ORPHEUS AT THE ZOO 
buildings, such sounds are new and unusual; and 
others which are but recent arrivals in the Gardens, 
fresh from tropical forests, or the wastes and deserts 
of an unmusical world. In any case, to listen to the 
distant strains of a brass-band is a different experience 
from that enjoyed in a chamber recital by your own 
violin-player, one who can draw from his instrument by 
sympathetic skill melodious chords, sounds soft and 
weird, grave and gay, strident or tremulous, har- 
monious or suddenly discordant, eye watching eye, 
and quick to change or repeat a note as he marks 
the varying expression of emotion roused by sound 
on animal faces, sometimes strangely expressive, or 
on others in which for minutes the eye alone gives 
token even of life. It was on some of these last, 
the snakes and creeping things, that we proposed 
first to make trial of the powers of sound, — partly 
because Eastern traditions of snake-charming are 
some of the oldest in the world ; partly because, if 
they proved unresponsive, this would still leave room 
to hope that creatures of a higher organization and 
warmer blood might be more appreciative ; and lastly, 
the day was dark, with thunder and rain, and Orpheus 
himself, in his sylvan concerts, might have failed to 
charm with wetted strings. 
Before visiting the cobras and the pythons, we 
made our way r to the Insect House, with some design 
of making trial of the tarantula spider, our violinist 
having a theory of his own that spiders had a liking 
for harmonious sound ; partly, too, from a mixed 
