VOICES OF ANIMALS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 375, 4 March 1863, Page 3

VOICES OF ANIMALS.

The voices of animals have a family character not to he mistaken. All the Caiiidx bark and howl: the fox, the wolf, the dog have the same kind of utterance, though on a somewhat different pitch. All the bears growl, from the white bear ofthe Arctic snows to the small black hear of the Andes. AU the cats miau, from our quiet fire-side companions to the lions, and tigers, and panthers of the forest and jungle. This last may seem a strange assertion; but to any one who has listened critically to their sounds . and analyzed their voices, the roar of the lion is but it gigantic miau, bearing about the same proportion to that of a cat as its stately and majestic form does to (lie smaller, softer, more peaceful aspect of the cat. Yet, notwithstanding the difference in their size, who can look at tlie lion, whether in his more sleepy mood as he lies curled up in the corner of his cage, or in his fierce moments of hunger or of rage, without being reminded of a cat ? And this is not merely the resemblance of one carnivorous animal to another ; for no one was ever reminded of a dog or a wolf hy a liou. Again, all the -horses and donkeys neigh ; for the bray of-tli c donkey iB" only a harsher neigh, pitched .on a different key, it is true, but a sound of the same character,—as the donkey himself is but a clumsy and dwarfish horse. All the cows low, from the buffalo roaming the prairie, the musk-ox of the Artie ice-fields or the Jack of, Asia, to the cattle feeding in our pastures. Among the birds, this similarity of voices in families is still more marked. We need only recall the harsh aud noisy parrots, so similar in their peculiar uttrauce. Or take as an example the web-footed family,—do not all the geese and the innumerable host of ducks quack. Does not every member of the crow family caw, whether it be the jackdaw, the jay, the magpie, the rook in some green rookery of the old world or the crow of our woods, with its long melancholy caw that seems to make the silence deeper ? Compare .all the sweet warblers of the songster family—the nightingales, the thrushes, the mocking birds, the robins: they differ in the greater or less perfection of their note, but the same kind of voice runs through the whole group. These affinities of the vocal systems among animals form a subject well worthy of the deepest study, not only as another character by which to classify the animal' kingdom correctly, but a3 bearing indirectly also on the question of the origin of animals. Can we suppose that characteristics like these have been communicated from one animal to another ? When we find that all the members of one zoological family, however widely scattered over the surface of the earth, inhabiting different continents, and even different hemispheres, speak with one voice, must we not believe that they have originated in the places where they now occur in all their distinctive peculiarities ? Who faugh the American thrush to sing like his European relative ? He surely did not learn it from his cousin over the waters. Those who would have us believe that all animals have originated from common centres and single pairs, and to have been distributed from such common -centres over the world, will find it difficult to explain the tenacity of such characters and their recurrence and repetition under circumstances that seem to preclude the possibility of any communication, or on any other supposition than that of their creation in the different regions where they are now found. We have much yet to learn in thfe kind of investigation with reference not only to families among animals, but to nationalities among men also. I trust that the nature of languages will teach us as much about the origin of the races as the vocal systems of the animals may one day teach us about the origin of the different groups of animals. At all events similarity of vocal utterance among animals is not indicative of identity of species; I doubt therefore whether similarity of speech proves community of origin among men.— " Methods of Studying Natural History," in the Atlantic Monthly"