THE EFFECT OF MUSIC ON A HARE.
The following anecdote was communicated, some years since, by Mr. James Tatlow, of Wiegate, near Manchester, who had it from those who were witnesses of the fact.
“One Sunday evening, five choristers were walking on the banks of the river Mersey, in Cheshire, after some time, they sat down on the grass, and began to sing an anthem. The field in which they sat, was terminated, at one extremity, by a wood, out of which, as they were singing, they observed a hare to pass with great swiftness towards the place where they were sitting, and to stop at about twenty yards distance from them. She appeared highly delighted with the music, often turning up the side of her head to listen with more facility.
“As soon as the harmonious sound was over, the hare returned slowly towards the wood; when she had reached nearly the end of the field, they began the same piece again; at which the hare stopped, turned about, and came swiftly back again, to about the same distance as before, where she seemed to listen with rapture and delight, till they had finished the anthem, when she returned again, by a slow pace, up the field, and entered the wood.—The harmony of the choristers, no doubt, drew the hare from her seat in the wood.”
Eastcott’s Sketches of the Origin and
Effects of Music.