Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 148, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 July 1918 — City Boys Keener of Ear Than Are Country Fellows [ARTICLE]

City Boys Keener of Ear Than Are Country Fellows

English army doctors, finding city boys keener of ear than country boys, adopt the theory that the quietude of rural districts explains the difference, says the New York World. Urban noises, they argue, keep the aural nerves in a state constantly responsive. Looking across seas, these savants may discover that the keenest human ear ever known, those of the Indians and the frontiersmen, have been developed in the silences of American forests and prairies. It seems probable that hearing, like many another faculty, depends for its active strength upon the exercise due to necessity. It is need, rather than noise, which keeps a listener’s nerves on the alert.