Part 8

One of the oddest tales in the “Bestiaries,” or stories of Bible animals written by the monks, is the legend of the panther. “The panther,” so the homily runs, “is the most beautiful of all beasts. More than this, when it goes abroad it diffuses a marvellous sweet perfume. This odour is so sweet that all the other beasts and birds follow the panther wherever it goes. Wherefore the panther is a type of Virtue.” Perhaps the old monks who borrowed and embellished this story had heard and misunderstood the strong love of sweet scents which the panther and its relations, the lions and leopards, often show. The old theory of animal liking for scents denied them any share in such pleasures unless they suggested the presence of their food or prey. But such a reason can hardly be alleged for a lion’s liking for lavender-water! The writer, wishing to test for himself the reported fondness of many animals for perfumes, paid a series of visits to the Zoological Gardens, provided with bottles of scent and a packet of cotton-wool, and there tried some harmless experiments which apparently gave great satisfaction to many of the inhabitants. Lavender-water was the favourite scent, and most of the lions and leopards showed unqualified pleasure when the scent was poured on the wool and put into their cages. The first leopard to which it was offered stood over the ball of cotton, shut his eyes, opened his mouth, and screwed up its nose, rather like the picture of the gentleman inhaling “Alkaram” in the advertisement. It then lay down and held it between its paws, rubbed its face over it, and finished by lying down upon it. Another leopard smelt it and sneezed; then caught the wool in its claws, played with it, then lay on its back and rubbed its head and neck over the scent. It then fetched another leopard which was asleep in the cage, and the two sniffed it for some time together; and the last-comer ended by taking the ball in its teeth, curling its lips well back, and inhaling the delightful perfume with half-shut eyes. The lion and lioness, when their turn came, tried to roll upon it at the same time. The lion then gave the lioness a cuff with his paw, which sent her off to the back of the cage, and having secured it for himself, laid his broad head on the morsel of scented cotton, and purred. These were all old inhabitants of the Gardens, civilized. But at the end of the building was the lovely young Sokoto lion, with the spots of “cubhood” still showing like a pattern in damask on his skin. If he too liked the scent, it could hardly be an acquired taste. His reception of the new impression was different from that of the others. He lay down inhaling the scent with a dreamy look in his eyes. Then he made faces and yawned, turned his back on the scent, and thought. He then inhaled the perfume again for some time, walked slowly off to his bed, and lay down to sleep.

The smaller cats were in many cases as pleased with the scent as the leopards, the ocelot in particular on one occasion, after inhaling the perfume, _ate_ the small piece of paper on which it was poured. But the liking for lavender-water is by no means confined to the _felidæ_. The Cape ratels were delighted with the scent, and the racoon, when the bottle was presented to it corked, with great good sense pulled out the stopper; but this may have been due to curiosity, as it was at once thrown away. Other creatures, on the contrary, either cared nothing for the scent or found it disagreeable. An otter, in particular, gave a snort of disgust, dived into the water, and then ran to its mate, to whom it seemed to convey some of its impressions, for both otters carefully avoided the perfumed wool. No doubt there lies somewhere in our rivers, “under the glassy, cool translucent wave,” or on their flower-bordered banks, some odorous herb or water-weed which the otter also loves. That the pleasure felt by so many animals in the odour of “sweet lavender” is due to pure and simple enjoyment of a perfume, made intensely more delightful to them than to ourselves by the wonderful development of their sense of smell, seems clear, not only from the fact that so many species share this amiable fondness for the scent, but also because their liking for perfumes is by no means limited to that of lavender. A flask of rose-water will make as many friends among the leopards and their kin as will the former scent, and they also enjoy the sweet odour of pinks and lilac-blossom. The heavy scent of lilies and narcissi fails to please, perhaps on account of their strong narcotic qualities. It is not unlikely that the scent of these plants, with which the Furies were said to stupefy their victims, an odour which is often insupportable to men themselves, should be distasteful to their far more sensitive nostrils.

It could hardly be expected that, in the matter of sweet sound, animals, any more than men, should think alike. The scent of the rose gives pleasure from the Himalayas to the Hebrides; but the music that soothes the Highlander is to the Japanese as the howling of cats. Still, as to some men certain sounds are always musical, so to some animals these same sounds give pleasure. The taste finds perhaps its highest expression in those birds which actually learn to whistle the airs which they have heard from men, and its lowest in the snakes and reptiles, which seem to be fascinated by the Indian pipe. The writer has heard more than one parrot whistle part of a tune, and then strike the octave of the last note; and the piping crow at the Zoological Gardens, and a Persian bulbul, which was once an inmate of the same aviary, can whistle a tune perfectly. It is to be expected that birds which take such pleasure in each other’s songs should be most sensitive to sweet sounds new to them.

But the taste is not confined to birds. The old horses in the regimental riding-schools learn the meaning of the different bugle-calls; and though it is not possible to say whether they distinguish between different airs, it is well known that they trot or gallop better to some tunes than to others. This may be compared with a curious story told by Playford in his _Introduction to Music_. “When travelling some years since,” he writes, “I met on the road to Royston a herd of about twenty bucks following a bagpipe and a violin: while the music played they went forward; when it ceased they all stood still; and in this manner they were brought out of Yorkshire to Hampton Court.” Seals have long been known for their love of sweet sounds. Laing, in his account of a voyage to Spitzbergen, says that when a violin was played on board the vessel, a numerous audience of seals would often assemble and follow the vessel for miles. Sir Walter Scott mentions this taste in the lines,—

“Rude Heiskar’s seals, through surges dark, Would oft pursue the minstrel’s bark;”

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.

The “dweller on the threshold” of the snakes’ home is the monitor lizard, an active and formidable saurian some 5 ft. in length, whose watchful habits were said to give warning of the approach of the crocodile. It did not belie its reputation for watchfulness, for the instant that it heard the sounds of the violin through its opened door, it raised its head, and stood alert and listening. Then the forked tongue came out and played incessantly round its lips; soft, slow music followed, and the lizard became quite still, except for a gentle swaying of the head from side to side. Two groups of black snakes from the Robben Islands next claimed our attention, and gave some evidence of the way in which the physical conditions of the moment affect the sensibilities of these creatures. In the first cage, they remained absolutely torpid, looking exactly as if carved out in polished ebony. In the next, the heads were raised at once, the forked tongues played, and at a sudden discord each snake’s head started violently back. Nor was this quick repulsion caused by any sudden movement of the bow, for the player was invisible. In the next cages to these were some small boas, and Madame Paulus’s pythons, with which that lady used to perform in a tank at the Royal Aquarium. The pythons showed no signs of interest, except by a quickened respiration; but a boa was at once attracted by the music. As it worked along the rounded rim of its circular bath in the direction of the sounds, it gave a beautiful exhibition of that snake-movement for which we have no name—neither crawling nor creeping, but gently enveloping portions of the surface on which it lay with its lower scales, and advancing noiselessly and almost imperceptibly. Arrived at the side of the bath nearest to the door, it extended its head with a kind of tremulous motion until it obtained a view of the violin. It remained for some minutes motionless, with its eye fixed upon the instrument, until the music became loud and strident. Then, in sinuous folds, it dropped like some viscous fluid to the ground, and slowly advanced to the door, from which it was gently put back by its keeper.

But the cobra is the snake to which all tradition points as most susceptible to musical sounds, and we prepared to watch its attitude towards the violin with no little excitement and curiosity. The accounts of Indian residents mainly agree in saying that the snake-charmer does influence these serpents by the monotonous notes of his little bagpipes; that as soon as the sound is heard, the snake rises, spreads its hood, and often waves its head from side to side in some sort of time to the music; and that, under these conditions, these venomous serpents may be handled with impunity. The last claim of the snake-charmer is perhaps over-bold. The snakes appear generally to have their fangs drawn. But in any case, opinion agrees that the sound of the pipes does attract and interest the cobra. Wild cobras are also induced by the pipe-player to come out from the holes in old wells or ruins in which they have taken up their residence, the snake being noosed when its body is sufficiently clear of the hole to enable it to be jerked away by the snake-charmer’s partner.

The behaviour of the cobras at the Zoo more than justified the Indian stories. We selected for our serenade a large yellow Indian cobra, which was lying coiled up asleep on the gravel at the bottom of its cage. At the first note of the violin, the snake instantly raised its head, and fixed its bright yellow eye with a set gaze on the little door at the back. The music then gradually became louder, and the snake raised itself in the traditional attitude on its tail, and spread its hood, slowly oscillating from one side to the other as the violin played waltz-time. There was a most strangely “interested” look in the cobra’s eye and attitude at this time, and the slightest change in the volume or character of the music was met by an instantaneous change in the movements or poise of the snake. At the tremolo, it puffed its body out. A rattlesnake in the next cage was also listening intently at the same time, with its head drawn back, and slowly rising and falling. But it was less apparently sensitive than the cobra. The violin suddenly reproduced the sound of the bagpipes, which greatly excited the snake; and as the “drone” was put on to the tune of “The Keel Row,” its hood expanded to its utmost dimensions. Soft minor chords were then played, and a sudden sharp discord struck without warning. The snake flinched whenever this was done, as if it had been struck, and this, it may be worth noting, was subsequently found to be a general effect of discords on most animals of a higher organization. The results of these further experiments were naturally more easy to detect and record than in the case of the snakes; but it may be taken as established, that at the Zoo there are serpents that are not yet deaf to the voice of the charmer, even if he lack the training of Eastern magicians.

ORPHEUS AT THE ZOO.

THE SECOND VISIT.