Our music, like our architecture, seems to have no foundation in nature, they are both arts purely of human creation, as they imitate nothing.  And the professors of them have only classed those circumstances, that are most agreeable to the accidental taste of their age, or country; and have called it Proportion.  But this proportion must always fluctuate, as it rests on the caprices, that are introduced into our minds by our various modes of education.  And these fluctuations of taste must become more frequent in the present age, where mankind have enfranchised themselves from the blind obedience to the rules of antiquity in perhaps every science, but that of architecture.  See Sect.  XII. 7. 3.

XI.  There are many articles of knowledge, which the animals in cultivated countries seem to learn very early in their lives, either from each other, or from experience, or observation:  one of the most general of these is to avoid mankind.  There is so great a resemblance in the natural language of the passions of all animals, that we generally know, when they are in a pacific, or in a malevolent humour, they have the same knowledge of us; and hence we can scold them from us by some tones and gestures, and could possibly attract them to us by others, if they were not already apprized of our general malevolence towards them.  Mr. Gmelin, Professor at Petersburg, assures us, that in his journey into Siberia, undertaken by order of the Empress of Russia, he saw foxes, that expressed no fear of himself or companions, but permitted him to come quite near them, having never seen the human creature before.  And Mr. Bongainville relates, that at his arrival at the Malouine, or Falkland’s Islands, which were not inhabited by men, all the animals came about himself and his people; the fowls settling upon their heads and shoulders, and the quadrupeds running about their feet.  From the difficulty of acquiring the confidence of old animals, and the ease of taming young ones, it appears that the fear, they all conceive at the sight of mankind, is an acquired article of knowledge.

This knowledge is more nicely understood by rooks, who are formed into societies, and build, as it were, cities over our heads; they evidently distinguish, that the danger is greater when a man is armed with a gun.  Every one has seen this, who in the spring of the year has walked under a rookery with a gun in his hand:  the inhabitants of the trees rise on their wings, and scream to the unfledged young to shrink into their nests from the sight of the enemy.  The vulgar observing this circumstance so uniformly to occur, assert that rooks can smell gun-powder.

The fieldfares, (turdus pilarus) which breed in Norway, and come hither in the cold season for our winter berries; as they are associated in flocks, and are in a foreign country, have evident marks of keeping a kind of watch, to remark and announce the appearance of danger.  On approaching a tree, that is covered with them, they continue fearless till one at the extremity of the bush rising on his wings gives a loud and peculiar note of alarm, when they all immediately fly, except one other, who continues till you approach still nearer, to certify as it were the reality of the danger, and then he also flies off repeating the note of alarm.