90 LESSONS FKOM NATUEE. [CHAP. IV. 



The intellectual activity of their minds is indeed evi 

 denced by the peculiar construction of their sentences. Mr. 

 Tylor tells us (p. 25): &quot;Their usual construction is not 

 black horse, but horse black ; not bring a black hat/ 

 but hat black bring ; not I am hungry, give me bread/ 

 but hungry me bread give. &quot;* Thus we see how thoroughly 

 mistaken Professor Huxley was when he asserted ( Man s 

 Place in Nature, p. 102, note) : &quot; A man born dumb, not 

 withstanding his great cerebral mass and his inheritance of 

 strong intellectual instincts, would be capable of few Uglier 

 intellectual manifestations than an orang or a chimpanzee, if 

 he were confined to the society of his dumb associates.&quot; 

 Quite contrary to this, there can be no doubt but that a 

 society of dumb men would soon elaborate a gesture-language 

 of great complexity. 



Passing now to savage men, Mr. Tylor makes some excel- 

 Mr. Tyior on lent remarks on, and brings forward a good ex- 

 savages. am pl e o f, that reckless and unjust depreciation of 

 native tribes of which travellers are so apt to be guilty, 

 and of which we shall find other examples when we come 

 to the subject of religion. A Mr. Mercer having said of the 

 Veddah tribes of Ceylon that their communications have 

 little resemblance to distinct sounds or systematised lan 

 guage, Mr. Tylor observes (p. 78) : 



&quot; Mr. Mercer seems to have adopted the common view of foreigners 

 about the Veddahs, but it has happened here, as in many other 

 accounts of savage tribes, that closer acquaintance has shown them to 

 have been wrongly accused. Mr. Bailey who has had good oppor 

 tunities of studying them, . . . contradicts their supposed deficiency 

 in language with the remark, I never knew one of them at a loss for 

 words sufficiently intelligible to convey his meaning, not to his fellows 

 only, but to the Singhalese of the neighbourhood, who are all more or 

 less acquainted with the Veddah patois. &quot; 



Again, as to another well-known traveller he remarks 



(P- 79):- 



&quot; It is extremely likely that Madame Pfeiffer s savages suffered the 



* This spontaneous tendency may be pleaded in mitigation of De Candolle s 

 strictures on Latin construction as unnatural. 



