The daily morning journal and courier., 1903-09-14
SOUNDS YOU CAN'T HEAR.
Many Animals Have Sharper Senses
 Than Man.

Many Animals Have Sharper Senses
 Than Man.
 Most people suppose a mole to be dumb, but it is not, says the Chicago Record Herald A mole can give a sound so shrill that it hasn't any effect oh the human ear at all, and another sound so low and soft that no human being can hear it. Yet weasel can hear both these sounds as plainly as you can the report of a gun, and a sound registering machine, the phonau- tograph, will show them both, with scores of other sounds that you are deaf to-
 The usual note of the mole is low purr, which it uses good deal while at work underground, and it can also shout at the top of it's voice. if hurt or alarmed; but though it shouted and purred in your ear you wouldn't hear it. The sound register, however, with its delicate pencil that marks the volume of sound on paper, gives the quality Of both sounds.
 A weasel, too, which is one of the mole's enemies, can hear these sounds through a couple of inches of earth, and often catches the mole when he throws up his hillocks of earth. The common field mouse, too, has a purr that is altogether beyond you, though you can hear him squeak plainly enough if he is hurt. A deaths head moth too, can squeak, but that is done by rubbing his wings together, and is not a voice at all
 But the champion of all creatures for good hearing, and one that can hear a sound that is over a hundred degrees beyond our own limit, is the common thrush, and you may often amuse your. self by watching him at it. He can hear lobworm moving underground locate him by the noise and haul him out.
 Often you may see a thrush stand perfectly still on your lawn, cock his ear and listen intently, then make a couple of steps and haul out fat lob worm. Even the starling, which is about the size of a thrush, cannot do. this, but he knows the thrush can, and, being disreputable person with no common honesty, he follows the young thrushes about on their worm hunts, and steals the. worms from them as soon as they are caught.
 As for the. smells you can't smell, they are more numerous than those you can, and if you want an example go on your knees in a field where there are cartridges and see if you can smell them six or seven yards away-or even freshly dead one an inch from your nose.
 They have no scent to you. But if you own a pointer dog you may watch him canter across field at full speed and suddenly stop as if shot, tail out stretched and body rigid, nose in the air. all because he caught the scent of a covey of birds some yards away waited to him by the wind. He-and most other dogs can smell 8 lark as far as partridge. 4
 But if you choose you can make your- self smell fifty per cent. better by wet ting your finger and drawing 1t under your nose With damp nostrils, like the dog, you will detect scents tht did not reach you before.
 Coming to the feelings you cannot feel, perhaps 1t is as we'll they are so numerous. You can feel gnat settle on your skin but not a lake midge nor fifty of them, and you cannot even feel ! their bite-though they stick quiver- full of saws and files into you--till the irritation begins. :
 But watch one of these midges light on a horses fank-though they do not weigh 1-50000 of a dram--and you will see the horse give his whole skin twist, round about where the midge is, and try to shake it off. Even though he has a shaggy coat, he can feel that midge alight.
 Besides these limits to your every day senses, however, there are several senses which you haven't got at all but which plenty of other creatures have. One is the sense of weather. You can- not tell by any sense-except newspa- per reports the weather will be the day after tomorrow, but animals can. for they carry natural barometers in their brains. When frost for in- stance, has lasted week or two. and all the meadows are bound up, you will find insect feeding birds that have gone to the mudbanks of estuaries moving back in f1ocks to the fields thirty hours before the first sign of a thaw. <