26 
A NATURALIST ON THE PROWL . 
pass the time, but a sound repeated at regular intervals 
soothes the savage breast and inspires ecstasies of joy. 
How or why it does so I cannot tell, but the fact is not 
open to dispute. In the valley just below me a man is 
playing the tom-tom and will do so without stopping 
till to-morrow morning. On he goes, tum-tara-rum-tum, 
turn, turn, turn, turn ; and I have no doubt an admiring 
audience is sitting round him. He did not acquire that 
art to please the ladies, but to please himself You 
may say he does it because he is paid for it, and of 
course he does, but that does not affect the argument. 
Men pay him because he gives them pleasure, but he 
has the power to give them pleasure just because his 
own sense of it is keener than theirs. 
While I was listening to the tom-tom my ear caught 
the notes of a musical cricket at the root of a tree quite 
close to me. Most crickets repeat one note monotonously, 
but this was evidently a talented cricket. It had two 
or four short notes and a long one, and I found, by 
beating time to its song, that the rhythm was faultless. 
Where, then, is the difference between the cricket and 
the tom-tomwalla ? Nowhere. They are both musicians 
of the first degree, proficient in time, but not attaining 
