RUSTIC SOUNDS

and other
STUDIES IN LITERATURE AND
NATURAL HISTORY

by
SIR FRANCIS DARWIN

With Illustrations

london
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W.
1917

CONTENTS

To
F. H. D.

I
RUSTIC SOUNDS

Sounds are to me more reminiscent than sights; they bring back the sensations of childhood, and indeed all memories of my past life, in a way more touching and clear than what is seen.  Wendell Holmes claims the sense of smell as most closely associated with memory; for me, as I say, it is that of hearing.

In this paper I shall wander in imagination through the different seasons in the home of my youth, and let the recalled rustic sounds lead where they will.

To children there is something impressive and almost sacred in the changes of the seasons, in the onset of winter, or the clear approach of spring.  The first of these changes was heralded for me by the appearance of puddles frozen to a shining white; mysterious because the frost had drunk them dry in roofing them with ice, and especially delightful in the sharp crackling sound they gave when trodden on.  This was the noise of the beginning of winter.  Another winter memory is the humming whistle of the boys’ feet as they slid on the village pond, a remembrance that recalls my envious admiration of their heavily nailed boots, giving them an advantage in pace and a more noble style of sliding.

Another familiar sound was the wicked groaning crack that ran round the solitary pond on which we skated, as it unwillingly settled down to bear us on its surface.  It had a threat in it, and reminded us how helpless we were, that the pond-spirit was our master and had our lives in its grip.

Another winter note was the hooting of invisible owls, boldly calling to each other from one moonlit tree to another.  In the spring there was the querulous sound of the lambs, staggering half fledged in the cold fields among the half-eaten turnips beside their dirty yellow mothers.  Not the sheep of the Dresden shepherdess, but rather of the old man in As You Like It, who warns Rosalind that shepherding has its ugly side.  Yet it had something prophetic of more genial days.

As the sap began to rise in the trees my thoughts lightly turned to the making of whistles.  I was taught the mystery by a labourer in my father’s