NATURE 



509 



THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 189* 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

 The speech of Monkeys. By R. L. Garner. (London : 

 Heinemann, 1892.) 



IT is somewhat unfortunate, and is certainly not a little 

 embarrassing to the critic who desires to take Mr. 

 Garner seriously, that he has chosen to present to the 

 world "this first contribution to science on the subject'' 

 of the speech of monkeys in the form of popular and 

 chatty anecdotes, with reflections thereon suitable for the 

 delectation of elderly spinsters. This is the style of 

 writing to which we refer, and of which the book before 

 us largely consists : — 



" I shall long remember how this dear little monk 

 (Pedro the Capuchin) would cuddle up under my chin, 

 and try so hard to make me imderstand some sad story 

 which seemed to be the burden of his life .... I have 

 frequently been entertained by a like speech from 

 little Dodo, who was the Juliet of the Simian tribe. She 

 belonged to the same species as the others, but her 

 oratory was of a type far superior to that of any other of 

 its kind that I have ever heard. At almost any hour of 

 the day, at the approach of her keeper she would stand 

 upright and deliver to him the most touching and impas- 

 sioned address. The sounds which she used, and the 

 gestures with which she accented them, as far as I could 

 determine, were the same as those used by Dago and 

 Pedro in their remarks to me as above described, except 

 that Dodo delivered her lines in a much more impressive 



manner than either of the others I have not been 



able up to this time to translate these sounds literally, 

 but their import cannot be misunderstood. My belief is 

 that her speech was a complaint against the inmates of 

 the cage, and that she was begging her keeper not to 

 leave her alone in that great iron prison with all those 

 big, bad monkeys who were so cruel to her." 



This is the anecdotal style ; the heading of the chapter 

 in which Dodo is introduced running thus : " Dago talks 

 about the Weather— Tells Me of His Troubles— Dodo 

 in the 'Balcony Scene,' ''&c. It is not easy, we repeat, 

 to deal with this kind of thing in a spirit of serious criti- 

 cism. And then we have passages of which the 

 following is a sample : — 



" I assert that all mammals reason by the same means 

 and to the same ends, but not to the same degree. The 

 reason which controls the conduct of a man is just 

 the same in kind as that which prompts the ape. . . . 

 That samje faculty which guided man to tame the 

 winds of commerce, taught the nautilus to lift its 

 tentacles and embrace the passing breeze. . . . That 

 psychic spark which dimly glows in the animal 

 bursts into a blaze of effulgence in man. The one differs 

 from the other just as a single ray of sunlight differs from 

 the glaring light of noon. If man could disabuse his 

 mind of that contempt for things below his plane of life, 

 and hush the siren voice of self-conceit, his better senses 

 might be touched by the eloquence of truth. But while 

 the vassals of his empty pride control his mind, the 

 plainest facts appeal to him in vain, and all the cogency 

 of proof is lost. He is unwilling to forego that vain be- 

 lief that he is Nature's idol, and that he is a duplicate of 

 Deity. Held in check by the strong reins of theology 

 and tradition " — and so forth for another page and a half. 



These be the reflections suitable for the delectation of 



elderly spinsters. We must excuse ourselves from 



criticising Mr. Garner's remarks on reason in animals, 



for there is no evidence in his book that he has, by a 



NO. I 196, VOL. 46] 



careful training in psychology, earned for himself the 

 right of expressing a scientific opinion on this difficult 

 question. 



And yet Mr. Garner is at work upon an interesting and 

 important problem in the elucidation of which scientific 

 results will be of great value ; and he is working on the 

 right lines, namely, those of experiment and observation 

 in close contact with phenomena. It is worth while 

 therefore, to dig out from his volume the few results of 

 scientific value he has at present reached, to endeavour to 

 set them in their true light, and to encourage him in the 

 further prosecution of his labours. 



It is well known to all observers that animals emit 

 sounds expressive of their emotional states, and that these 

 sounds convey, and are often apparently intended to con- 

 vey, an intimation to their fellow- creatures of such 

 emotional states. No one who has watched a dog growl- 

 ing, a cat swearing, or a lamb bleating, can question this 

 elementary fact. The present writer has lately been ob- 

 serving and making experiments with young chicks 

 Towards the close of the first week there were at least 

 five well-distinguished sounds: the soft "cheep" of con- 

 tentment, the more excited note of unusual satisfaction, 

 the complaining "weep-weep" of slight discomfort, the 

 sharper cry when they were caught up, for example, by a 

 strange hand, and, quite distinct from all the rest, the 

 danger " churr." There can be little doubt that these 

 several sounds, as emitted by one of the chicks, were of 

 suggestive value to its little brothers and sisters. And 

 they were quite spontaneous and not the result of 

 imitation, for the chicks had never seen any of their 

 kind. Had these chicks been reared in the ordinary way, 

 and not as experimental orphans, their hen mother would 

 no doubt have given opportunity for observing that by 

 certain sounds she could call her brood's attention to 

 things good to eat. And there can be little doubt that a 

 dog can call its companion's attention to something 

 worriable, though whether there are differentiations, e.g.., 

 for cat and rat, we cannot say. We have ourselves been 

 unable to detect such differences in our own dogs. 



It is thus a matter of familiar observation that animals 

 emit sounds which are of suggestive value, and that these 

 sounds are in some cases suggestive of emotional states, 

 and in others of external objects. It is to such sounds 

 as emitted by monkeys that Mr. Garner has mainly 

 directed his attention. Let us give in his own words 

 some of his results : — 



" Standing near the cage of a little Capuchin, I imitated 

 a sound which I had translated ' milk,' but from many 

 tests I concluded it meant ' food,' which opinion has been 

 somewhat modified by many later experiments which led 

 me to believe that he uses it in a still wider sense. It is 

 difficult to find any formula of human speech equivalent 

 to' it. While the Capuchin uses it relating to food and 

 sometimes to drink, 1 was unable to detect any difference 

 in the sounds. He also seemed to connect the same 

 sound to every kindly office done him, and to use it as a 

 kind of 'shibboleth.' More recently, however, I have 

 detected in the sound slight changes of inflection under 

 different conditions, until I am now led to believe that 

 the meaning of the word depends somewhat, if not wholly, 

 on its modulation." 



Again : — 



" I approached the cage [of another Capuchin], and 

 uttered the sound which I have described and translated 



Z 



