and it is said that when the bell of the church on the island of Hoy rang, the seals within hearing swam to the shore, and remained looking about them as long as it was tolled. In a less prosaic age, the seals of Hoy might have become an established myth of a successful “deep-sea mission” to the mermaids of the North. It would be interesting to make some musical experiments at the Zoological Gardens; but the first occasion on which the writer attempted this, led to such strong suspicion of his insanity among the visitors, that in the face of a caution addressed by an elderly nurse to her charges, “Don’t go near ’im—he ain’t right in his ’ead,” he had not the courage to continue his researches.
Note.—In a letter to the writer, the late Dr. John Rae, F.R.S., the discoverer of the fate of the Franklin Expedition, urged that he should nevertheless make some trial of the effects of music on the different animals at the Zoo. Dr. Rae spent the days of his boyhood in the Orkney and Shetland Islands, and said that both there and in the regions round the frozen rim of the northern ocean, it was matter of common experience that the seals would follow a boat in which music was played. The following chapters give the interesting result of this suggestion.
ORPHEUS AT THE ZOO.
THE FIRST VISIT.
In making trial, with the aid of a skilled musician, of the effect of sweet sounds on animal ears, we knew that there was good reason to doubt whether Orpheus himself might not fail to charm within the precincts of the Zoo. For if, on the one hand, the creatures so far share the blessings of the golden age that they entertain a liking rather than a fear of man, and have no dread of a possible enemy behind the mask of music, many of them are no strangers to such forms of it as are produced by the harmony of a band which plays there weekly in summer evenings. To those creatures which have lived for years in that part of the Gardens near the band-stand, the sound of music is no new thing; and it was possible that they might be as indifferent to its strains as an organ-grinder’s monkey to the music of the street. On the other hand, there must be many to which, either from living at a distance from the musical centre of the band-stand, or in separate buildings, such sounds are new and unusual; and others which are but recent arrivals in the Gardens, fresh from tropical forests, or the wastes and deserts of an unmusical world. In any case, to listen to the distant strains of a brass-band is a different experience from that enjoyed in a chamber recital by your own violin-player, one who can draw from his instrument by sympathetic skill melodious chords, sounds soft and weird, grave and gay, strident or tremulous, harmonious or suddenly discordant, eye watching eye, and quick to change or repeat a note as he marks the varying expression of emotion roused by sound on animal faces, sometimes strangely expressive, or on others in which for minutes the eye alone gives token even of life. It was on some of these last, the snakes and creeping things, that we proposed first to make trial of the powers of sound,—partly because Eastern traditions of snake-charming are some of the oldest in the world; partly because, if they proved unresponsive, this would still leave room to hope that creatures of a higher organization and warmer blood might be more appreciative; and lastly, the day was dark, with thunder and rain, and Orpheus himself, in his sylvan concerts, might have failed to charm with wetted strings.
Before visiting the cobras and the pythons, we made our way to the Insect House, with some design of making trial of the tarantula spider, our violinist having a theory of his own that spiders had a liking for harmonious sound; partly, too, from a mixed feeling that the tarantula, whose bite makes others dance, should itself have a feeling for musical numbers. Apparently the tarantula’s powers are objective only, for it remained in its corner sulky and unmoved. But a nest of scorpions was less indifferent. After the piece of bark behind which these venomous creatures were lurking had been gently overturned, and they had settled down to their usual semi-slumbrous state, the violinist played chords, at first gentle and melodious, then rising to a high and sustained series of piercing notes. In a few moments, one after another, the creatures began to move, the mass became violently agitated, and the torpid scorpions awoke into a writhing tangle of legs and claws and stings. When the sounds ceased, they became still; when the loud, shrill notes were played again, they were again agitated. The talking mynah, which lives in the same room, sprang from end to end of its cage with ecstatic hops, and whistled and coughed, and gave evidence that it at least was a critical listener to the rival musician. The pretty dappled Axis deer, which live in a little paddock by the path, were our next audience; and as we passed them on our way to the snakes’ house, a few soft chords were played by way of trial. The deer were at once attracted, and drew near the railings, with ears pointed forward. While low, pathetic chords were played, they stood still, panting, but not unpleased. At a sudden discord they sprang back, and shook their heads. Loud, quick music followed; but this failed to please, they stood further off, stamped, and shook their heads again, looking excited and defiant. But we had not come to play to the deer that day. The snakes and pythons were our object, the more so as we could play to these without interruption from the interested visitors, whose inconvenient attention our enterprise was beginning to attract.
“Behind the scenes” in the new Reptile House lies a most interesting region; and Orpheus has a prescriptive right of entry to the arcana of the serpent-world. We explained the object of our visit,—
“Cessit immanis mihi blandienti
Janitor aulæ!”
and we were most kindly taken to the private side of snake-land at the Zoo. There, if we may not “breakfast on basilisks’ eggs,” as in the land of Cleopatra’s asp, we may at least see the creature that does breakfast on basilisks’ eggs, the great monitor lizard, which eats the eggs of the crocodile—or of hens at the Zoo, where crocodiles’ eggs are scarce. There too we may see young basilisks, or crocodiles, frisking in a homely watering-pot; young rats too, by the score, parti-coloured and piebald, the destined food of serpents, but meantime in high spirits and playfully squeaking. It was the very place for a chamber concert to the cobras, for the thick plate-glass before the cages shuts out the sound of the curious crowd in front, while in the back of each compartment is a small square iron door, like those through which food is passed in model prisons to the inmates of the cells. This door, in the case of the poisonous snakes, is set high above the ground, and is reached by a set of steps which travels on a rail. It is therefore possible to observe the creatures’ movements while the player of the music is out of sight below.