74 Boundary Between Man and the Lower Animals. [January, 
bear no resemblance to those of man. So long as they 
answer a corresponding end, I consider this distin@tion im- 
material. But every language seems inarticulate to those 
to whom it is quite unintelligible. The English peasant 
hearing a conversation between two Frenchmen proclaims it 
mere chatter, such as a monkey might utter, and in which 
he can recognise nothing like words. The ancient Greek 
called all barbarians ‘‘tongueless.”. The modern Pole, 
Wend, or other Slavic man, terms his German neighbours 
‘“‘mute.” If, then, men fail to recognise the articulate 
character of human languages which they do not under- 
stand, can we wonder if sounds, produced by vocal organs 
differing more or less from their own, seem to them mere 
aimless growling, shrieking, and chattering? Iam far from 
supposing that the languages of brutes are remarkable for 
regularity, complication, and richness of expression. But 
how wide is the diversity in this respect among the human 
race! ‘The Veddahs of Ceylon “‘ communicate with each 
other by signs, grimaces, and guttural sounds which bear 
little or no relation to distinét words.”* If we assume that 
the languages of the chimpanzee and the pongo are as much 
inferior to the tongue of the Veddahs as that is, in turn, to 
Greek or Sanskrit, need we wonder, if to human ears the 
ape-dialects seem utterly inarticulate ? 
Finally, there are animals really dumb—devoid of vocal 
organs, and therefore incapable of mutual communication by 
sound ; devoid also of antennz or corresponding parts requi- 
site for a language of signs; solitary, and therefore needing 
no language. The gulf between such animals on the one 
side, and the vertebrata and articulata on the other, is in- 
comparably wider than that existing between the latter and 
man. Man has a very complicated and highly-developed 
speech; the ape, the rook, and the ant, a comparatively 
rudimentary, but the oyster none. If, then, the animal 
world is to be divided according to the presence or absence 
of this faculty, the line will fall, not between man and the 
anthropoid apes, but between the vertebrates and articulates 
on the one hand, and the molluscs and still lower forms on 
the other. Hence all attempts to establish a “ great gulf” 
between ‘“‘man and beast” by means of language are alto- 
gether illusive. 
* Sir E. TENNANT, vol. ii. 
