270 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



£3 lis. lO^d., and that is the price of an 

 ounce of gold. This is as much as to say 

 that if you send a cask of beer to the bottler 

 and he fills one hundred bottles with the 

 contents, the one hundred bottles is the 

 price of the cask of beer. Of course, the 

 gold and the beer before and after coining 

 and bottling respectively are the same, and 

 the £3 17s. lOJfZ. is an ounce of gold and 

 not the price of it, just as the contents of 

 one hundred bottles are the beer that was in 

 the cask and not the price of it. I need 

 hardly add that this talk of a mint price is 

 the old and time-worn talk of the currency 

 faddists who believe in inconvertible paper." 

 It is a great pity that books like this of 

 Mr. Giffen can not find their way into the 

 hands and minds of those smitten with the 

 silver mania, and who have been brought to 

 regard the much-abused metal, as they term 

 it, with emotions akin to those excited by 

 contemplation of the forlorn and oppressed. 



The Speech of Monkeys. By R. L. Garner. 

 8vo, pp. 217. New York: Charles L. 

 Webster & Co. Price, $1. 



In the title of this book lies the potency 

 which has prompted the acceptance of Mr. 

 Garner's various essays on the subject. by 

 the leading reviews. The honest enthusiasm 

 of the author and his positiveness have given 

 a charm and virility to his writings, and 

 made them attractive reading. 



The initiatory impulse which has im- 

 pelled Mr. Garner with unparalleled persist- 

 ency arose in early childhood, from a super- 

 stition, common to all children and savages, 

 that animals talk among themselves. This 

 belief, instead of being outgrown by Mr. 

 Garner, became the dominating impulse of 

 his life — has animated him to the most pains- 

 taking efforts, and to the most sanguine ut- 

 terances. The book abounds in surmises to 

 be answered in only one way ; no effort is 

 made to even suggest any other conclusion 

 than the one which supports his thesis. On 

 the very first page, for instance, he wonders 

 how it has occurred to man to whistle to a 

 horse and dog instead of using some sound 

 more like their own. He says, "lam at a 

 loss to know how such a sound has ever be- 

 come a fixed means of calling these animals." 

 The simple answer should have occurred to 

 Mr. Garner that a whistle is easier to utter, 



is heard farther, and is not only the univer- 

 sal call for dogs but for boys and men. The 

 whistle of the boatswain, postman, police- 

 man, and car-shifter shows the simple utility 

 of this kind of a sound as a call or a signal 

 note. 



His experiments with monkeys are very 

 interesting and amusing; his explanations, 

 however, can often bear a different interpre- 

 tation ; thus, on page 76, he describes an 

 experiment with a glove to which he had at- 

 tached a string by which he drags the glove 

 slowly toward him across the floor. The 

 monkey, on first seeing it at a distance, gives 

 a low note of warning, and as the glove ap- 

 proaches she makes a louder note. He says, 

 in regard to these subdued notes of warning, 

 " Her purpose was to warn me of the ap- 

 proaching danger without alarming the ob- 

 ject against which the warning was intended 

 to prepare me." It may be observed, how- 

 ever, that all emotional sounds made by ani- 

 mals increase in loudness just in proportion 

 to the excitement occasioned by the cause. 



Mr. Garner's interpretation of the ges- 

 ture for negation seems quite reasonable. 

 His experiments with the phonograph in- 

 spire him to further efforts " to find out 

 the fountain-head from which flows out the 

 great river of human speech." Mr. Garner 

 should know that if he is to go to the foun- 

 tain-head he is not to run out to the extreme 

 tip of one of the twigs which branched off 

 in the Tertiaries, but rather to study the half- 

 apes and the lemurs if he is to get the re- 

 motest light on the subject. 



A preparation for the work Mr. Garner is 

 engaged in should have been prefaced by an 

 exhaustive study of the emotional sounds 

 emitted by man — sounds quite distinct from 

 articulate utterances which form words and 

 sentences. As an illustration of these sounds, 

 let one witness a base-ball game and observe 

 the different cries which go up from the au- 

 dience at different points of the play. A 

 few years ago there was a gate-keeper at the 

 Brooklyn base-ball grounds who, though far 

 out of sight of the game, could tell by the 

 kinds of sounds emitted by the multitude pre- 

 cisely what was happening on the field. With 

 unerring certainty he could say, " There's 

 a hot ball caught from the bat," or " man 

 put out at first," " home-run," " caught on 

 the fly," " rank decision," etc. And yet these 



