" This view is no longer tenable;
whatever the precise origin of the musical notes of animals may be,--and
it is not necessary to suppose that sexual attraction had a large part in
their first rudimentary beginnings,--there can now be little doubt that
musical sounds, and, among birds, singing, play a very large part indeed
in bringing the male and the female together.[112] Usually, it would
appear, it is the performance of the male that attracts the female; it is
only among very simple and primitive musicians, like some insects, that
the female thus attracts the male.[113] The fact that it is nearly always
one sex only that is thus musically gifted should alone have sufficed to
throw suspicion on any but a sexual solution of this problem of animal
song.
It is, however, an exceedingly remarkable fact that, although among
insects and lower vertebrates the sexual influence of music is so large,
and although among mammals and predominantly in man the emotional and
aesthetic influence of music is so great, yet neither in man nor any of the
higher mammals has music been found to exert a predominant sexual
influence, or even in most cases any influence at all. Darwin, while
calling attention to the fact that the males of most species of mammals
use their vocal powers chiefly, and sometimes exclusively, during the
breeding-season, adds that "it is a surprising fact that we have not as
yet any good evidence that these organs are used by male mammals to charm
the female.
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