OCR Text |
Show Concourse of Sweet Sounds as Pigeons Fly Long before the radio was dreamed of the Chinese had ''music on the air," according to Dr. Berthold Laufer, curator of anthropology nt Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago. This they accomplished by means of small reed Instruments resembling re-sembling pipes of Pan, which they attached to the tail feathers of pigeons. Whole flocks of pigeons are thus equipped, each bird with whistles whis-tles producing different notes, and as the birds fly the wind strikes the apertures of the instruments, setting them to vibrating and creating a pleasant open-air concert. The Chinese explanation of the practice is that the sounds of the whistles are intended to keep the flocks togethei and to protect the birds from the onslaughts of hawks and other birds of prey. This rationalistic ra-tionalistic interpretation, however, Is not convincing. It is doubtful whether wheth-er such music makes any impression on either pigeon or hawk, and since this music constantly (ills the nt-mosphere nt-mosphere year after year the unrelenting unre-lenting foes of the pigeon would gradually become accustomed to It and disregard it even if it had kept them away at first. It seems more plausible that this quaint custom has no rational origin, but that it rather is the outcome of purely emotional and artistic tendencies. It Is not the pigeon that profits from this aerial music, but the human ear. On n se-j se-j rone day one can hear this concert I In Peking all day, even in one's house. |