THE POWER OF ANIMALS TO EXPRESS 

 THOUGHT 



THE thoughts of birds and beasts are prob- 

 ably few and simple. Yet it is unhkely that 

 they are able to communicate all their 

 thoughts to one another, because the lan- 

 guage they possess consists of a few monosyllables, by 

 which they can express only elementary feelings such 

 as pain, anger, fear, hunger, and the presence of food. 

 Some animals possess a much larger vocabulary than 

 others. Dr. Garner, who went to Africa to study the 

 language of his Simian brothers, found that the aver- 

 age monkey was able to emit only about seven cries, 

 but the vocabulary of the highly intelligent chimpanzee 

 comprised twenty-two separate calls. 



According to Mr. Edmund Selous, the rook is really 

 in process of evolving a language. He records no fewer 

 than thirty-three distinct sounds he heard rooks utter, 

 and states that this is but a small page out of their 

 vocabulary. Nevertheless, he is compelled to admit 

 that only in few cases was he able to connect a note 

 with any particular state of mind. 



The articulate language of animals is a language of 

 monosyllables, a language composed almost entirely 



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