VOCAL LANGUAGE. 305 



But speech, like song, is more frequently the result of 

 tuition by man and of incessant practice in lesson-learning. 



According to Houzeau, however, articulate sounds are not 

 confined to the Psittacidce or to birds, but occur in certain 

 other animals for instance, in the siamang and the gorilla. 



Certain 'learned' dogs have been taught a kind of speech 

 (Leibnitz) to use certain words so as to express certain 

 wants (Watson), so as at least to be able to order or call for 

 certain articles. But this sort of speaking, when it does not 

 consist of mere differentiated tones of the bark, falls very 

 far short of the true speech of the parrot, both as regards 

 the distinctness of the utterance and the knowledge of the 

 meaning of words and their appropriate applications. 



Certain other learned dogs, while they cannot in any 

 way speak or utter words, can yet compose words, possess- 

 ing as they do a certain knowledge of man's alphabet and of 

 the practice, if not some of the principles, of applying it in 

 composition (Watson). They recognise certain at least of 

 his printed letters and words, and they can select and 

 arrange the former so as to constitute the latter that is to 

 say, to a certain limited extent they can compose words. 



It is, then, quite legitimate to speak of the loquacity, 

 garrulity, prattle, or talk of certain parrots, and probably 

 also of certain other birds, such as the starling, raven, and 

 jackdaw. In other cases, however, what is called speech in 

 birds may be mere sounds, resembling, or supposed to re- 

 semble, man's words or phrases; what is magniloquently 

 described by itinerant showmen as talking in fish which 

 are really seals is merely the emission of a kind of cry, 

 resembling some such word or sound as * Ma-ma.' 



There is, for instance, a so-called 'speaking bird' in 

 Guiana (Waterton), and the 'talking crow' of Jamaica (Wat- 

 son), with the exact nature of whose speech I am unac- 

 quainted. The forms of indistinct utterance that constitute 

 spurious speech include the chatter, jabber, or palaver of 

 monkeys and apes, of sparrows and swallows, of the merlo 

 and goose, of the hyaena and peccary, and much, no doubt, 

 of the so-called talk even of the starling. 



Those who have studied bird song have pointed out the 



