paroxysms of Revenge, and every note grumbles away into Despair."
More sympathetic and less nervous hearers have found much to interest them in the cat's vocalism, with its flexibility and astonishing variations, "Le chat mise en possession d'une belle et grande voix," wrote Moncrif appreciatively. M. Dupont de Nemours, a close and loving student of animals, maintained that, whereas the dog possesses only vowel sounds, the cat uses in her language no less than six consonants,—m, n, g, h, v, and f. M. Champfleury professed to have counted sixty-three notes in the mewing of cats, though he acknowledged that it took an accurate ear and much practice to distinguish them. He also considered the sign or gesture language used by cats to be even more copious and expressive than their audible tongue. The Abbé Galiani could discern only twenty notes in the most elaborate mewing; but insisted that these sounds represent a complete vocabulary, inasmuch as a cat always makes use of the same note to express the same sentiment. He was able to distinguish clearly between the male and female tones, which he held to be as different in the cry of animals as in the singing of birds. It was his opinion, moreover, that not a single quaver in all the "infernal gallemaufry o' din," which we hear from the moon-lit wall, voices that tender passion
