476 MUSCULAR MOTION. 



M. Comte, another ventriloquist, and of some celebrity, who has 

 endeavoured to explain the physiology of his art, affirms, that voice 

 takes place as usual in the larynx ; but is modified by the action of 

 other parts of the apparatus; that inspiration directs it into the thorax, 

 where it resounds; and that both strength and flexibility are required 

 in the organ to produce this effect. This, however, is no explanation. 

 It is now universally admitted, that the voice of the ventriloquist is 

 produced in the larynx; and that its character and intensity are modi- 

 fied by the action of other parts of the apparatus, but the particular 

 agency that produces it is not elucidated by any of these attempted 

 explanations of the ventriloquist. 



About forty years ago (1810), Dr. John Mason Good, 1 in some lec- 

 tures delivered before the Surrey Institution of London, suggested that 

 the larynx alone, by long and dexterous practice, and, perhaps, by a 

 peculiar modification in some of its muscles or cartilages, may be capa- 

 ble of answering the purpose, and of supplying the place of the asso- 

 ciate organs of the mouth. In confirmation of this view, he remarks, 

 that, in singing, the glottis is the only organ made use of, except where 

 the notes are articulated ; and it is apparently the sole organ employed 

 in the mock articulations of the parrot and other imitative birds ; some 

 of which have exhibited unusual powers. A parrot belonging to a Colo- 

 nel O'Kelly, could, it is said, repeat twenty of the most popular English 

 songs, and sing them to their proper tunes. The. larynx, too, is the 

 sole organ of all the natural cries; and hence, it hasbeen imagined by 

 Lord Monboddo 2 to have been the chief organ of articulate language, 

 in its rudest and most barbarous state. "As all natural cries," he 

 observes, " even though modulated by music, are from the throat and 

 larynx, or knot of the throat, with little or no operation of the organs 

 of the mouth, it is natural to suppose, that the first languages were, for 

 the greater part, spoken from the throat; and that what consonants 

 were used to vary the cries, were mostly guttural ; and that the organs 

 of the mouth would at first be but very little employed." Certain it is, 

 that privation of the tongue does not necessarily induce incapacity of 

 articulation; whether the defect be congenital, or caused after speech 

 has been acquired. Professor John Thomson of Edinburgh found the 

 speech but little impaired after bullets had carried away more or less of 

 the tongue. 3 Under the Sense of Taste, several authentic cases were 

 stated of individuals, who were deprived of this organ, and yet possess- 

 ed the faculty of speech. To these we may add one other, which ex- 

 cited unusual interest at the time, and was examined under circumstances 

 that could admit of no deception. The case forms the subject of various 

 papers, by Dr. Parsons, in the Philosophical Transactions of London. 4 A 

 young woman, of the name of Margaret Cutting, of Wickham Market, 

 near Ipswich, in Suffolk, when only four years old, lost the whole of her 



1 Book of Nature, ii. p. 238, Lond., 1834; see also his Study of Medicine, Physiological 

 Proem to Class ii., Amer. edit, i. 206, Philad., 1824. 



2 Origin and Progress of Language, i. 322, Edinb., 1773. 



a Report of Observations made in the British Hospital, in Belgium, after the Battle of 

 Waterloo, Edinb., 1816. 



4 Philosoph. Transact, for 1742 and 1747. 



