the word "who ; a very feeble "w"; and here and there a slight gutteral "ch."

To imitate the word which I interpret " food," fix the mouth as if to whistle draw the tongue far back into the mouth, and try to utter the word "who" by blowing. The pitch of sound is a trifle higher than the cooing of a pigeon, and not wholly unlike it. The phonics appear to me to be "wh-u-w," with the consonant elements so faint as to be almost imaginary. In music the tone is F sharp, thus and this seems to be the vocal pitch of the entire species, though they have a wide range of voice. The sound which I have translated "drink" or "thirst" is nearly uttered by relaxing and parting the lips, and placing the tongue as it is found in ending the German word “ich,” and in this position try to utter "ch-e-u-w," making the "ch" like "k," blending the "e" and "u" like "slurred" notes in music, and suppressing the "w" as in the first case. The consonant elements can barely be detected, and the tone is about an octave higher than the word used for "food." Another sound I suspected was a “menace" or "cry of alarm," but I was unable to utter it, except with the phonograph; but during February I had access to a fine specimen of the capuchin, in Charleston, S.C. On my first visit to him I found him very gentle, and we at once became good friends. He ate from my hands and seemed to regard me very kindly. The next day, while feeding him, I uttered the peculiar sound of "alarm," whereupon he sprang at once to a perch in the top of his cage, and as I continued the sound he seemed almost frantic with fright. I could not tempt him by any means to come down. I then retired some twenty feet from the cage, and his master (of whom he is very fond) induced him to come down from the perch, and while he was fondling him I gave the alarm from where I stood. He jumped again to his perch and nothing would induce him to leave it while I remained in sight. The next day, on my approach, he fled to his perch and I could not induce him on any terms to return. It is now some time since I began my visits, and I have never, since his first fright, induced him to accept anything from me, and only with great patience can I get him to leave his perch at all, although I have not repeated this peculiar

sound since my third visit, nor can I again elicit a reply from him when I say his word for "food" or "drink."

This sound may be fairly imitated by placing the back of the hand very gently to the mouth, and kissing it, drawing in the air, and producing a shrill, whistling sound, prolonged and slightly circumflexed.

Its pitch is the highest F sharp on the piano. It is not whistled, however, by a monkey, but is made with the vocal organs. While this is the highest vocal pitch of a capuchin, there are other sounds much more difficult to imitate or describe. It must be remembered that an attempt to spell a sound which is almost an absolute vowel, can at best convey only a very imperfect idea of the true sounds or the manner of uttering them.

I have access also to another specimen of the same variety, with which I am experimenting, but I have never tried the "alarm" on him as I do not wish to lose his friendship. He uses all the words I know in his language, and speaks them well.

My work has been confined chiefly to the capuchin monkey, because he seems to have one of the best defined languages of any of his genus, besides being less vicious and more willing to treat one civilly. So far as I have seen, the capuchin is the Caucasian of the monkey race. The chimpanzee has a strong but monotonous voice, confined to a small range of sounds, but affords a fine study while in the act of talking. I have not gone far enough with him as yet to give much detail of his language. There are only three in America now, and they talk but little and are hard to record. I have recorded but one sound made by a sooty monkey; three by a mandril; five by the white-face sapajou; and a few of less value. But from the best proof I have found I have arrived, as I believe, at some strange facts, which I shall here state.

I. The simian tongue has about eight or nine sounds, which may be changed by modulation into three or four times that number.

2. They seem to be half-way between a whistle and a pure vocal sound, and have a range of four octaves, and so far as I have tried they all chord with F sharp on a piano.

3. The sound used most is very much like "u "-" oo,” in “shoot.”

The next one something like "e" in "be." So far I find no a, i, or o.

4. Faint traces of consonant sounds can be found in words of low pitch, but they are few and quite feeble; but I have had cause to believe that they develop in a small degree by a change of environment.

5. The present state of their speech has been reached by development from a lower form.

6. Each race or kind has its own peculiar tongue, slightly shaded into dialects, and the radical or cardinal sounds do not have the same meanings in all tongues.

7. The words are monosyllabic, ambiguous and collective, having no negative terms except resentment.

8. The phonic character of their speech is very much the same as that of children in their early efforts to talk, except as regards the pitch.

9. Their language seems to obey the same laws of change and growth as human speech.

10. When caged together one monkey will learn to understand the language of another kind, but does not try to speak it. His replies are in his own vernacular.

II. They use their lips in talking in very much the same way that men do; but seldom speak when alone or when not necessary.

12. I think their speech, compared to their physical, mental, and social state, is in about the same relative condition as that of man by the same standard.

13. The more fixed and pronounced the social and gregarious instincts are in any species, the higher the type of its speech.

14. Simians reason from cause to effect, and their reasoning differs from that of man in degree, but not in kind.

To reason, they must think, and if it be true that man cannot think without words, it must be true of monkeys: hence, they must formulate those thoughts into words, and words are the natural exponents of thoughts.

15. Words are the audible, and signs the visible, expression of thought, and any voluntary sound made by the vocal organs with a constant meaning is a word.

VOL. IV. No. 25.

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16. The state of their language seems to correspond with their power to think, and to express their thoughts.

If we compare the tongues of civilised races with those of the savage tribes of Africa which are confined to a few score of words, we gain some idea of the growth of language within the limits of our own genus. The few wants and simple modes of life in such a state account for this paucity of words; and this small range of sounds gives but little scope for vocal development, and hence their difficulty in learning to speak the tongues of civilised men. This is, doubtless, the reason why the negroes of the United States, after a sojourn of two hundred years with the white race, are unable to utter the sounds of "th," "thr," and other double consonants; the former of which they pronounce "d" if breathing, and “t” if aspirate; the latter like "trw." The sound of " V they usually pronounce "b," while "r" resembles "w" or "rw" when initial, and as a final is usually entirely suppressed. They have a marked tendency to omit auxiliaries and final sounds, and in all departures from the higher types of speech tend back to ancestral forms. I believe, if we could apply the rule of perspectives and throw our vanishing point far back beyond the chasm that separates man from his simian prototype, that we should find one unbroken outline, tangent to every circle of life from man to protozoa, in language mind, and matter.

The sage of science finds the fossil rays of light still shining in the chamber of sleeping epochs, and by their aid he reads the legends on the guide-posts of time; but the echoes of time are lost and its lips are dumb; hence our search for the first voice of speech must come within the brief era of man; but if his prototype survives, does not his parent speech survive? If the races of mankind may be the progeny of the simian stock, may not their languages be the progeny of the simian tongue?

R. L. GARNER.

FOLIOS AND FOOTLIGHTS.

HALL I tell you a deadly secret? As a "true blue Meredith

SH

man" (to borrow Robert Louis Stevenson's enthusiastic confession of faith), I have tried to persuade myself that One of One of Our Our Conquerors has all the best qualities of its author. I have Conquerors. By George wrestled with that story, and listened for the great heart-throb of Meredith. (Chapman its mystery. I have clung to the belief up to the very last page and Hall.) that there must be some profound significance somewhere. I have read all the reviews which the other Meredith men have written, and recruited patience with their robust assertion that in the third volume George Meredith rises to the Pisgah heights of prophetic vision. But reverent disciple as I am, exhausted nature can no longer withstand the conviction that the matter of this book is tortured to death by the manner. There is genuine tragedy in the lives of Victor and Nataly, haunted by the vindictive piety of Mrs. Burman. There is pathos in Nesta's discovery of the smirch on her mother's fame through her pity for the declassed Judith Marsett. Mr. Meredith has the materials for as moving a tale of frailty, fortitude, and tragic irony as his genius could wish. Yet everything is spoilt by a stifling perversity which buries the human interest under mountains of intellectual lumber. One thing Mr. Meredith has done which is surely the climax of his disastrous method. He has created the most appalling Bore in English fiction. Your bore is generally a dull man, a moral portent, a monster of glib self-sufficiency; but George Meredith's champion Bore is a philosopher and a satirist, whose wit is admired and dreaded and perpetually quoted. His name is Colney Durance, and when he is not favouring the company with some laborious