It is of little use to ask why animals are equipped with voices, for the fact is an animal could hardly be constructed with lungs and apparatus for controlling ingress and egress of air without the controlling organ's being more or less noisy or even musical. Snorts, snores, whistles, purrs, groans, and trumpetings follow naturally where the bellows and pipe are active. Although Darwin considers that the habit of uttering musical sounds was first acquired for courtship, and that in man it was early associated only with his strongest emotions, such as love, rivalry, and triumph, the writer holds the opinion that both significant and musical utterance originated not in any desire to move others, but was cultivated solely for the pleasure it gave the one who made it. If primitive man did not receive language ready-made at creation, but developed it as the philologists claim, it was a gradual acquisition. While our early ancestor dug in the ground he emitted certain sounds, as he pursued he uttered others, and as he devoured he indulged in a different grunt or exclamation. When he wished to call the attention of others to one of these acts he merely reproduced the sound that went naturally with it. And so _clamor concomitans_ became _clamor significans_. But the sound as it came forth at first had no meaning and no design. The man made the sound rather instinctively than mentally and he enjoyed making sounds as much as a baby now enjoys crowing or a youngster delights in yelling when he has no ideas he cares to convey. Much of the singing of birds is done merely because the birds wish to please themselves with the sounds peculiar to themselves. They are, as a rule, in no-wise trying to charm their mates, and they are not at all desirous of pleasing anyone but themselves. It would be as reasonable to claim that the carpenter on the roof is whistling to please his sweetheart or that the lumberman alone with his cattle in the forest trolls forth his jolly song for any amorous reason. There are times when these purposes are the cause of singing, but the fact is that the great majority of the singing and whistling done by men, birds, and beasts sounds far better to the ones that produce it than to any other. In fact, society itself would be in a far better state if the men and women who sing would only acknowledge that they are doing so mainly to please themselves, and they might then be persuaded in part to leave off trying to surprise their hearers at times by singing louder or higher or faster than nature intended they should do. Most people enjoy listening to song, but no one can appreciate the beauties of it so well as the artistic singer who has acquired his talents by assiduous and intelligent discipline. His enjoyment of his own efforts is as much higher than that of his auditors as is the pleasure of the man who sings out of tune above the felicity of his hearers.