98 THE DESCENT OF MAN. 



ton remarks, "to provincial dialects;" and the songs of 

 allied though distinct species may be compared with the 

 languages of distinct races of man. I have given the fore- 

 going details to show that an instinctive tendency to 

 acquire an art is not peculiar to man. 



With respect to the origin of articulate language, after 

 having read on the one side the highly interesting works of 

 Mr. Hensleigh Wedgwood, the Rev. F. Farrar, and Prof. 

 Schleicher,* and the celebrated lectures of Prof. Max Miil- 

 ler on the other side, I cannot doubt that language owes its 

 origin to the imitation and modification of various natural 

 sounds, the voices of other animals and man's own instinctive 

 cries, aided by signs and gestures. When we treat of sexual 

 selection we shall see that primeval man, or rather some 

 early progenitor of man, probably first used his voice in 

 producing true musical cadences, that is in singing, as do 

 some of the gibbon-apes at the present day; and we may 

 conclude from a widely-spread analogy, that this power 

 would have been especially exerted during the courtship of 

 the sexes would have expressed various emotions, such as 

 love, jealousy, triumph and would have served as a chal- 

 lenge to rivals. It is, therefore, probable that the imita- 

 tion of musical cries by articulate sounds may have given 

 rise to words expressive of various complex emotions. The 

 strong tendency in our nearest allies, the monkeys, in 

 microcephalous idiots, f and in the barbarous races of man- 

 kind, to imitate whatever they hear deserves notice, as 

 bearing on the subject of imitation. Since monkeys cer- 

 tainly understand much that is said to them by man, and 

 when wild utter signal-cries of danger to their fellows; J 

 and since fowls give distinct warnings for danger on the 

 ground, or in the sky from hawks (both, as well as a third 



* " On the Origin of Language," by H. Wedgwood, 1866. " Chap- 

 ters on Language," by the Rev. F. W. Farrar, 1865. These works 

 are most interesting. See also "De la Phys. et de Parole," par 

 Albert Lemoine, 1865, p. 190. The work on this subject, by the late 

 Prof. Aug. Schleicher has been translated by Dr. Bikkers into En- 

 glish, under the title of "Darwinism tested by the Science of Lan- 

 guage," 1869. 



fVogt, "Memoire sur les Microcephales," 1867, p. 169. With 

 respect to savages, I have given some facts in my "Journal of Re- 

 searches," etc., 1845, p. 206. 



\ See clear evidence on this head in the two works so often quoted, 

 by Brehm and Rengger. 



