Both short and long-horned cattle, all of a dark-brown colour, may now be seen grazing over the plain round Hissarlik, the latter probably resembling more closely than the former those with which Homer was acquainted. The oxen alike of the Iliad and Odyssey are ‘wine-coloured,’ ‘straight-horned,’ ‘broad-browed,’ and ‘sinuous-footed’; it was above all through the shuffle of their gait, indicated by the last adjective, and due to the peculiar structure of the hip-joint in the whole species, that the poet distinctively visualised them. ‘Lowing kine,’ and ‘bellowing bulls’ are occasionally heard of, chiefly—it is curious to remark—in later, or suspected portions of the Iliad. Sheep and goats, on the other hand, are often described as ‘bleating,’ and the cries of birds are called up at opportune moments; but Homer’s horses neither whinny nor neigh; his pigs refrain from grunting; his jackals do not howl; the tremendous roar of the lion nowhere resounds through his forests. Homeric wild beasts are, indeed, save in the vaguely-indicated case of one indeterminate specimen,[141] wholly dumb. Footnote 141: _Iliad_, x. 184. Singularly enough, a peculiar sensitiveness to sound is displayed in the description of the Shield of Achilles. Yet plastic art is essentially silent. Even the perpetuated cry of the Laocoön detracts somewhat from the inherent serenity of marble. The metal-wrought creations of Hephæstus, however, not only live and move, but make themselves audible to a degree uncommon elsewhere in the poems. Thus, in one scene, or compartment, a _lowing_ herd issues to the pasturing-grounds, where two lions seize from their midst, and devour, a _loudly-bellowing_ bull, while nine _barking_, though frightened dogs are, by the herdsmen, vainly urged to a rescue. In the vintage-episode of the same series, delight in melodious beauty is almost as apparent as in the so-called ‘Homeric’ hymn to Hermes. The ‘Linus-song,’ ‘sweet even as desire,’ sung to the youthful grape-gatherers, sounds through the ages scarcely less sweet than The liquid voice Of pipes, that filled the clear air thrillingly, when the Muses gathered round Apollo long ago in the ethereal halls of Olympus.