MUSICAL TRAINING OF HERDS. 
113 
I know I have laid myself open to the charge of straying from 
my subject. On the contrary, I have not lost sight of my subject, 
the order of the Ruminants, and I now return by sweetest path, 
that of melody. The Ruminant adores melody — melody and salt, 
— one which perfumes the soul, the other which purifies the body. 
Yes, and the passion of melody is also one of the signs by which 
are recognized sweet and noble natures, the victim creatures. The 
lizard, emblem of innocence, dotes on the flute. 
The ox forgets, in listening to the plaintive pastoral song, both 
the hardness of the soil and the depth of the furrow. Those mad 
for love, are cured by tender airs. And what grief indeed would 
not yield, what storm of the heart would not melt in a rain of 
tears, under the sweet and melancholy impression which vibrates 
in the accents of certain female voices, which escapes as in aromal 
gushes, from the Invitation to the Waltz, or Weber’s Last Thought . 
I have already made many enemies among the fair sex of Asia 
Minor, by proclaiming this great truth : fat women are loved, thin 
ones only are adored. Y/ell ! I fear not to draw a new disgrace 
upon my head by saying : No harmonious and sweet thrilling or- 
gan ; no woman, no romance, no complete love ! The musical pas- 
sion of beasts has been known from a very early period. Thence 
those rumors floating through the ages, that Orpheus subdued the 
tigers of the desert, etc. The first legislators of the people — the 
poets — having seized before others the mysterious relations which 
united the beast to man by the chain of harmony, recorded the 
fact in their songs. In Persia the amorous elegy is entitled Gazelle. 
The French, Latins, and Greeks have called Bucolics their pastoral 
poetry. Aristotle, as we shall see farther on, knew the taste of the 
stag for sentimental music. Fable relates, that from the most an- 
cient times, man used the notes of the gamut to collect his herds. 
In the great pastures of Switzerland, every herd of cows is con- 
ducted by a commandant, who bears no other sign of generalship 
than a bell round his neck. But this bell has a particular sound, 
distinct from all the other bells of the neighborhood ; and all the 
members of the drove know this so well, that there is no example 
of a Swiss cow getting into the wrong herd by mistaking an ict 
for a sol. 
