220 CAN THE LOWEK ANIMALS CONVERSE? 



been of incalculable aid in his researches on this 

 subject. 1 



Articulate speech consists of vocal or vowel sound 2 

 divided by joints (articuli) into syllables. These 

 'joints' we term consonants. 'They are not musical 

 vibrations as vowels are, but noises accompanying 

 them.' 3 The voices of beasts and birds are not articu- 

 late, because no beast or bird can sound any consonant 

 except various gutturals. Their vocal utterances are 

 divided, not by joints (articuli), but by pauses 'rests' 

 as they are termed in music. In literature dogs are 

 made to say ' bow-wow/ but the most learned dog that 

 ever barked could never pronounce the labial consonant 

 6 any more than a cat could sound the initial consonant 

 of the conventional 'miaouw.' And so with all the 

 other lower animals. The nearest approach that any 

 of them can make to consonantal sound is the hiss of 

 a snake or of a blue-tit disturbed on her nest. But in 

 imitating either of these creatures one does not make 

 the sound between the tip of the tongue and the 

 teeth, as is necessary for a true sibilant, but between 

 the thick part of the tongue and the palate. 



Are we to believe, therefore, that beasts and birds 

 are unable to communicate to each other any intelli- 



1 Several years ago a statement went the round of the newspapers 

 that a certain French naturalist was on the point of starting on 

 travel in Africa, taking with him a gramophone, with which he 

 proposed to record the speech of baboons and monkeys. I have not 

 come across any report of the result. 



2 ' Vocal ' and ' vowel ' are of common Latin origin ; the first 

 formed direct from the Latin vocalis, the second transmitted through 

 the French voyelle, both ultimately offsprings of vox. 



3 Tylor's Primitive Culture, vol. i. p. 169 (third ed., 1891). 



