DOI article:
Grahame, Kenneth: The inner ear
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.21806#0078
The Inner Ear
74
inner ear of ours begins to revive and to record, one by one, the
real facts of sound. The rooks are the first to assert themselves. All
this time that we took to be so void of voice they have been volubly
discussing every detail of domestic tree-life, as they rock and sway
beside their nests in the elm-tops. To take in the varied chatter
of rookdom would in itself be a full morning’s occupation, from
which the most complacent might rise humble and instructed.
Unfortunately, their talk rarely tends to edification. The element
of personality—the argumentum ad hominem—always crops up so
fatally soon, that long ere a syllogism has been properly unrolled,
the disputants have clinched on inadequate foothold, and flopped
thence, dishevelled, into space. Somewhere hard by, their jackdaw
cousins are narrating those smoking-room stories they are so fond
of, with bursts of sardonic laughter at the close. For theology or
the fine arts your jackdaw has little taste ; but give him something
sporting and spicy, with a dash of the divorce court, and no Sunday
morning can ever seem too long. At intervals the drum of the
woodpecker rattles out from the heart of a copse ; while from
every quarter birds are delivering each his special message to the
great cheery-faced postman who is trudging his daily round over-
head, carrying good tidings to the whole bird-belt that encircles the
globe. To all these wild, natural calls of the wood, the farmyard
behind us responds with its more cultivated clamour and cackle ;
while the very atmosphere is resonant of its airy population, each
of them blowing his own special trumpet. Silence, indeed ! why,
as the inner ear awakes and develops, the solid bulk of this sound-
in-stillness becomes in its turn overpowering, terrifying. Let the
development only continue, one thinks, but a little longer, and the
very rush of sap, the thrust and foison of germination, will join in
the din, and go far to deafen us. One shrinks, in fancy, to a dwarf
of meanest aims and pettiest account before this army of full-blooded,
shouting
74
inner ear of ours begins to revive and to record, one by one, the
real facts of sound. The rooks are the first to assert themselves. All
this time that we took to be so void of voice they have been volubly
discussing every detail of domestic tree-life, as they rock and sway
beside their nests in the elm-tops. To take in the varied chatter
of rookdom would in itself be a full morning’s occupation, from
which the most complacent might rise humble and instructed.
Unfortunately, their talk rarely tends to edification. The element
of personality—the argumentum ad hominem—always crops up so
fatally soon, that long ere a syllogism has been properly unrolled,
the disputants have clinched on inadequate foothold, and flopped
thence, dishevelled, into space. Somewhere hard by, their jackdaw
cousins are narrating those smoking-room stories they are so fond
of, with bursts of sardonic laughter at the close. For theology or
the fine arts your jackdaw has little taste ; but give him something
sporting and spicy, with a dash of the divorce court, and no Sunday
morning can ever seem too long. At intervals the drum of the
woodpecker rattles out from the heart of a copse ; while from
every quarter birds are delivering each his special message to the
great cheery-faced postman who is trudging his daily round over-
head, carrying good tidings to the whole bird-belt that encircles the
globe. To all these wild, natural calls of the wood, the farmyard
behind us responds with its more cultivated clamour and cackle ;
while the very atmosphere is resonant of its airy population, each
of them blowing his own special trumpet. Silence, indeed ! why,
as the inner ear awakes and develops, the solid bulk of this sound-
in-stillness becomes in its turn overpowering, terrifying. Let the
development only continue, one thinks, but a little longer, and the
very rush of sap, the thrust and foison of germination, will join in
the din, and go far to deafen us. One shrinks, in fancy, to a dwarf
of meanest aims and pettiest account before this army of full-blooded,
shouting