PHILOLOGY. 393 



This examination of the vocal equipment of the beginning speakers 

 of Melanesia shows that the three speech organs of the buccal cavity 

 are employed with varying degrees of precision and facility. We find 

 that the first appearance of consonants modulating merely animal 

 vowels lies in the region which in our alphabetical tables we designate 

 as the liquid ; in this group we find three consonants, L and two types 

 of R ; some of these languages have arrived at facility in the use of L 

 only, others employ one or both of the R types, few employ all three. 

 The next step in advance consists in the employment of the nasal con- 

 sonants, NG, and N and M, with interchange, or more properly muta- 

 tion, between each of these primitive consonants and its neighbor in 

 the series; there is further an interchange between the L-R, and the 

 N of the nasal series, both of these groups being produced in practically 

 the same central area of the buccal cavity. 



The next step of progress consists in the employment of the con- 

 sonants producible by the palate. At this point we encounter a dis- 

 tinct principle of mutation which runs through all of the languages 

 involved in this study, namely, that mutation is confined to the con- 

 sonants produced by any one of the three speech-organs and does not 

 pass from any one speech-organ to another. We further find that the 

 earliest employment of the consonant possibility is confined to the 

 simplest and to the most forceful use of the speech-organ involved, 

 thus establishing the terminal points long before the medial positions 

 which later on are to intervene have become established (Easter Island, 

 page 18). Thus in the case of the palatal consonants w^e find a direct 

 leap from the nasal NG to the mute at the opposite extreme, either 

 surd K or sonant G. As the intervening sounds become established 

 in the palatal series we find that these beginning speakers have acquired 

 terminal points of the lingual series represented by S and T respectively. 

 Scarcely one of the languages of Melanesia has acquired such facility 

 in the use of the hps in speech as to enable them to pronounce even the 

 simplest of the labial consonants with certainty of enunciation. 



In this connection it is important to observe that comparative 

 anatomists, in their study of skeletal remains of the man of the inter- 

 glacial periods, have advanced the expression of the opinion that the 

 Neanderthal man and others of that epoch, as well as the Piltdown skull 

 (upon which has been erected the genus Eoanthropus) , were lacking in 

 ability to employ consonants in speech and therefore were lacking in 

 what might be called true human speech. Tliis opinion is based upon 

 study of the lower mandible and particularly of the point of attachment 

 of the genioglossal muscle. In effect, their contention is that the 

 genioglossal muscle of mankind of this priinitive type of evolution was 

 insufficient for the control of the central organs of speech, the tongue 

 wholly and the palate to a less distinct degree. It happens that the 

 only undisputed point of the Piltdown skull is the lower mandible, and 

 this point of the speechlessness of the aboriginal woman of Great 



