Chap. II. MENTAL POWERS. 55 



As Home Tooke, one of the founders of the noble 

 science of philology, observes, language is an art, like 

 brewing or baking ; but writing would have been a 

 much more appropriate simile. It certainly is not a 

 true instinct, as every language has to be learnt. It 

 differs, however, widely from all ordinary arts, for man 

 has an instinctive tendency to speak, as we see in the 

 babble of our young children ; whilst no child has an 

 instinctive tendency to brew, bake, or write. Moreover, 

 no philologist now supposes that any language has 

 been deliberately invented ; each has been slowly and 

 unconsciously developed by many steps. The sounds 

 uttered by birds offer in several respects the nearest 

 analogy to language, for all the members of the same 

 species utter the same instinctive cries expressive of 

 their emotions ; and all the kinds that have the power 

 of singing exert this power instinctively ; but the actual 

 song, and even the call-notes, are learnt from their 

 parents or foster-parents. These sounds, as Daines 

 Barrington 33 has proved, " are no more innate than 

 " language is in man." The first attempts to sing 

 " may be compared to the imperfect endeavour in a 

 " child to babble." The young males continue prac- 

 tising, or, as the bird-catchers say, recording, for ten 

 or eleven months. Their first essays show hardly a 

 rudiment of the future song; but as they grow older 

 we can perceive what they are aiming at ; and at last 

 they are said " to sing their song round." Nestlings 

 which have learnt the song of a distinct species, as 

 with the canary-birds educated in the Tyrol, teacli and 

 transmit their new song to their offspring. The slight 

 natural differences of song in the same species inha- 



33 Hon. Daines Barrington in ' Philosoph. Transactions,' 1773, p. 

 262. See also Dureau de la Malle, in ' Ann. des Sc. Nat.' 3rd series, 

 Zoolog. torn. x. p. 119. 



