THE VOICES OF NATURE. 125 
little or nothing to do with living creatures. The 
sunbeams would strike on our earth, the air would 
move restlessly to and fro, the water-drops would rise 
and fall, the valleys and ravines would still be cut 
out by rivers, if mere were no such thing as life upon 
the earth. But without living things there could be 
none of the beauty which these changes bring about. 
Without plants, the sunbeams the air and the water 
would be quite unable to clothe the bare rocks, and 
without animals and man they could not produce 
light, or sound, or feeling of any kind. 
In the next five lectures, however, we are going to 
learn something of the use living creatures make of 
the earth ; and to-day we will begin by studying one 
of the ways in which we are affected by the changes 
of nature, and hear her voice. 
We are all so accustomed to trust to our sight to 
guide us in most of our actions, and to think of things 
as we see them, that we often forget how very much 
we owe to sotind. And yet Nature speaks to us so 
much by her gentle, her touching, or her awful sounds, 
that the life of a deaf person is even more hard to 
bear than that of a blind one. 
Have you ever amused yourself with trying how 
many different sounds you can distinguish if you 
listen at an open window in a busy street ? You will 
probably be able to recognize easily the jolting of the 
heavy waggon or dray, the rumble of the omnibus, the 
smooth roll of the private carriage and the rattle of the 
light butcher's cart ; and even while you are listening 
for these, the crack of the carter's whip, the cry of the 
costermonger at his stall, and the voices of the passers 
