The Effects of Music on Animals.

A Pigeon Was One of Mozart’s Most Appreciative Auditors—Cats, Mice, and Cows Have Performed Queer Antics When Under the Influence of Strains from Violins and Pianos.

The power of music is growing to be recognized by physicians in the treatment of certain diseases. Its effect upon animals is very marked, sometimes for good and in other instances for quite the opposite, though it is not always easy to know just which is the case.

A writer in Harper’s Magazine half a century ago gave some results of personal observation of animals under the influence of music. These observations are interesting and amusing, and would seem to show beyond a doubt that animals may be quite as fond of sweet sounds as man.

The sensibility of animals to music will hardly be questioned in the present day, when the manners and habits of all animated nature are so thoroughly observed and studied.

We no longer doubt the dictum of the poet, who sings, “Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast”; and, therefore, it is not so much in corroboration of his assertion, as in illustration of a fact so interesting and pleasing in itself, that we are about to bring to the notice of the reader some few instances of animal love of music which are too well authenticated to admit of a doubt, and some of which are the records of our personal observation and experience.

Mozart and His Pigeon.

One of the German biographers of Mozart makes mention of a tame pigeon, which was the companion and pet of that extraordinary genius when a child. The bird, when at liberty, would never leave the side of the young composer while he was playing any instrument, and had to be caught and confined in his cage to prevent him from following his little favorite from room to room.

Whenever the boy came into the presence of the pigeon, the latter manifested the utmost uneasiness until he began to play; if the door of the cage were opened, the bird would fly to the violin and peck at the strings, or to the harpsichord and jump and flutter on the keys, and would not be pacified until the child sat down to play, when it would perch quietly on his shoulder, and sit there for hours almost without moving a feather.

Cats have a species of undelightful music of their own, performed, as we all know, at unseasonable hours on the leads, house-tiles, and garden-walls of our dwellings. Puss’s performances are generally too chromatic for ears not feline, and we humans are given to disconcert their concertos with a shower from the water-jug, or anything else that comes to hand, when their untimely carols rouse us from our sleep.

In revenge, puss is generally as indifferent to the sublimest strains of the human voice or cunningly played instrument as any post can possibly be, and prefers the untuneful scream of the cat’s-meat man to the noblest compositions of Beethoven.

Cats Have Musical Ears.

Still, as if nature was determined to assert the triumph of harmony over every living thing, now and then a cat turns up who has a genuine musical ear, and will manifest unequivocal satisfaction and delight at harmonious combinations of sound.

We once owned a cat who would listen complacently to music by the hour together, always accompanying it with a gentle purring—who would leave her hunting-ground in garden or cellar whenever music was going on in parlor or drawing-room—who would scratch at the door, and croon and mew to be let in, and would resent a prolonged exclusion by certain expressive displays of disapprobation. When admitted, she would leap on the piano, and attempt, after the New Zealand fashion of expressing regard, to rub noses with the performer.

An old friend of ours reports another instance, which is perhaps still more remarkable. He was in the habit, most evenings in the week, of spending an hour or two at the piano after the studious labors of the day.

His pet cat, though as a kitten indifferent to music, grew to like it, and regularly led the way to the piano when the business of the tea-table was done. Here she took post on a chair, and listened gravely during the whole performance. When it ceased, and the instrument was closed, she would return to the rug, or to his knee, and sleep out the rest of the evening.

A Feline Paderewski.

Not so, however, if the piano was left open; in that case, puss leaped on the keys and pawed a performance of her own, in which she showed an extreme partiality for the treble notes, and something like alarm at the big bass ones, when she happened to give them an extra vigorous kick with her heels. In fact, a rousing discord would frighten her off the keys, but she would return again and soothe her feelings by a gentle pattering among the upper notes.

These exploits she repeated whenever the piano was left open, and whether she had auditors or not; so that it became necessary to close the instrument or exclude the cat from the room in order to insure a moment’s quietness. If by any chance her master spent the evening from home, puss showed her disappointment and dissatisfaction by restlessness and ill-temper.

Twenty-five years ago the writer was one of a joint-stock proprietary who owned a boat on an inland river, winding through a retired and picturesque tract of country. There were seven of us, all being either singers or players of instruments; and in this boat it was our custom to spend an occasional leisure hour in musical voyagings up and down the river. To many an old English melody on these occasions did the moss-covered rocks and precipitous banks return harmonious echoes.

A Dancing Cow.

We made strange acquaintances on those long voyages, up a stream navigated by no other keel than ours, and, among other natural curiosities, we fell in with a musical cow. This creature, a small, cream-colored specimen of the Alderney breed, suckled her calf, along with a dozen other vaccine mothers, in a meadow which sloped down to the river’s brink.

Whenever we turned the bend of the river, “with our voices in tune as the oars kept time,” and the meadow came in sight, there we were sure to see the white cow, standing up to the shoulders in the water, whither she had advanced to meet us, her neck stretched out and her dripping nose turned toward the boat.

As we skirted the meadow, she kept pace with us on the bank, testifying her delight by antics of which no cow in her senses would have been thought capable. She would leap, skip, roll on her back, rear on her hind legs, and then hurl them aloft in the air like a kicking horse—now rushing into the water to look at us nearer, now frisking off like a kitten at play.

When she came to the meadow-fence, she dashed through it furiously into the next field, and so on through the next fence, and the next after that. The fourth being railed, she would turn it by wading the river, and was only prevented from following us farther by a steep, precipitous bank which stopped her progress.

After these mad gambols, she always returned to her calf, first saluting us with a long, plaintive kind of bellow, by way of farewell.

Violin Charms a Snake.

At this period it was that, rescuing a fine snake from some ignorant boys who were about to kill it, under the notion that it was venomous, but who were glad to sell it for twopence, we carried the slippery creature home, and assigned him a lodging in a small wicker basket, filled with moss and suspended by a single string from a hook in the ceiling of our bachelor’s snuggery.

The reptile grew to know us, and to welcome us in his way, by gliding his cold coil across our face and temples when we brought him fresh moss, or tempted him with food, which, by the way, he would never take. It was by accident only that we discovered his musical predilections.

One evening, while marching the room to the sound of our old violin, with which it was our custom to beguile an occasional hour, we caught sight of what seemed a monstrous python threatening us from aloft. It was the shadow of our pet snake, projected by the single candle on the table to the arched ceiling above, and magnified to formidable looking dimensions.

The fellow was hanging out of the basket almost by the tip of his tall, and, with his head stretched toward us, was following our motions as we walked up and down the room.

We remembered the snake-charmers, and conceived at once that it was the music which had brought him out; and so it proved, as we had opportunity of certifying by repeated experiments. Whenever he heard the violin he came out, and always with his head in the direction of the sound, as if anxious to reach it. When taken from the basket and hung around the neck, he lay limp and as if lifeless while the music lasted, and did not immediately recover when it had ceased.

One day, on finding that he made no appearance at the call of the violin, we reached down the basket and found him gone. Whether he had fallen out by accident while hanging by his tall, or taken the leap on purpose, there was no knowing; but he had disappeared, and we saw him no more, though a few weeks after his departure we found his skin, turned inside out, behind a box placed against the wall.

Dogs Are Discriminating.

Dogs, judging from the conduct of the generality of them, may be regarded as indifferent to music, as they are noticed neither to seek nor shun it, as a general rule. Being remarkably docile, however, they may be, and are, taught to discriminate tunes, and to dance to violin, pipe, and drum in a manner that indicates plainly enough their appreciation of musical time at least.

Some dogs grind organs at the command of their unfeeling exhibitors; and though they always set about the business with a serious face, that may be no proof that they dislike music.

Our own dog—a cross between a Scotch and a Skye terrier—is affected in an extraordinary way by the notes of the harmonium, and chooses to post himself close to the instrument while it is playing. So long as the music runs below a certain pitch all is well; but touch a single note above that, and he prepares to join in the performance himself.

A Tuneful Terrier.

If a shrill note is prolonged above a minim, he points his nose in the air, at an angle of about forty degrees, and, elongating his body in a straight line from the nostrils to the tail, pitches precisely the same note, which he will go on sounding as long as you please. The inference generally drawn is that he dislikes it, and that the notes to which he thus responds are painful to him. To us that is not so clear, since, though the door be open, and he has the run of the whole house, he never shows the least disposition to make his escape. Who shall say that it is not a luxury to him?

The point is doubtful, at least; and we shall give him the benefit of the doubt, and acquit him of the charge, which we deem odious, of disrelishing music.

We shall close the present sketch by a remarkable instance of the love of music exemplified in the conduct of a party of mice who had obtained surreptitious admission at a public concert. Thus it runs:

“Soon after Miss Hay had commenced her first song, the party occupying the front seats saw a mouse sauntering leisurely up and down, close to the skirting of the platform on which she was singing. As the song proceeded, the mouse stood spellbound. A lady tried to drive it away by shaking her concert-bill at it; but the little animal had lost its fear of man, and would not retire.

Appreciative Mice.

“At the conclusion of the piece the mouse vanished, but reappeared, bringing with it a companion when the next song commenced. At the end of song the second the two mice retreated to their hole, but made their third appearance on the boards when the singing was again renewed.

“Eventually, six or seven mice came out regularly with every song, and retired when the music ceased. While the melodious tones filled the apartment all attempts to drive away the mice were vain. These most timid members of the animal kingdom were too fascinated to be in terror of the human family, who actually filled the room; and though a fiftieth part of the means used to drive them away would, under ordinary circumstances, have sufficed, they now stood, or slowly glided, so entranced by the melody which pervaded the room that they were heedless of the presence of their natural enemies.

“How naturalists may explain this phenomenon we know not, nor shall we swell this article by attempting a solution.”

The paragraph concluded by giving the names of several respectable individuals who witnessed the singular phenomenon, and who were willing to testify to the truth of the report.