Expression Of The Emotions In Man And Animals

86 MEANS OF EXPRESSION CHAP. IV.

will ever be given. We know that some animals, after
being domesticated, have acquired the habit of utter-
ing sounds which were not natural to them.1 Thus do-
mestic dogs, and even tamed jackals, have learnt to bark,
which is a noise not proper to any species of the genus,
with the exception of the Canis latrans of North Ameri-
ca, which is said to bark. Some breeds, also, of the do-
mestic pigeon have learnt to coo in a new and. quite
peculiar manner.

The character of the human voice, under the influ-
ence of various emotions, has been discussed by Mr. Her-
bert Spencer 2 in his interesting essay on Music. He
clearly shows that the voice alters much under different
conditions, in loudness and in quality, that is,'in reso-
nance and timbre, in pitch and intervals. No one can
listen to an eloquent orator or preacher, or to a man call-
ing angrily to another, or to one expressing astonish-
ment, without being struck with the truth of Mr. Spen-
cer's remarks. It is curious how early in life the modu-
lation of the voice becomes expressive. With one of my
children, under the age of two years, I clearly perceived
that his humph of assent was rendered by a slight modu-
lation strongly emphatic; and that by a peculiar whine
his negative expressed obstinate determination. Mr.
Spencer further shows that emotional speech, in all the
above respects is intimately related to vocal music, and
consequently to instrumental music; and he attempts
to explain the characteristic qualities of both on physio-
logical grounds—namely, on "the general law that a
feeling is a stimulus to muscular action." It may be

1 See the evidence on this head in my ' Variation of
Animals and Plants under Domestication,' vol. i. p. 27.
On the cooing- of pig-eons, vol. i. pp. 154, 155.

2.' Essays, Scientific, Political, and Speculative,' 1858.
* The Origin and Function of Music,' p. 359.