276 THE HUMAN SPECIES 



if man would understand them aright The knowledge of 

 animals is no mean store of experiences, ideas and notions of 

 what to them seems useful or hurtful, suitable or unsuitable, 

 friendly or hostile. Their involuntary utterances are sounds of 

 pleasure or disgust : what they have to say to animals of their 

 own or other species are warnings or commands, expressions of 

 love and affection, or anger and hate. A dog when he hears 

 the word "cats," barks angrily, but jumps joyfully in the air 

 barking whenever his master gets ready to go out and says " come 

 along". A language which is not only intelligible to the same 

 species but can be understood by other animals is the warning 

 of some lurking or approaching enemy, like the warning note 

 of the farmyard cock, the shrike, the swallow, the blackbird 

 when a hawk is in the air, and the fighting cry of the raven 

 when pursued by the kestrel or hawk. Equally characteristic 

 are the alluring tones of the cock calling his hens to some tit- 

 bit he has found, or the hen summoning her chicks ; and the 

 sweet song of the mother bird in the nest with her young, or 

 the purring of the cat as she caresses her kittens. Philologists 

 are wont to value the language of animals far below its true 

 worth. Lazarus Geiger considers the bark of a dog as the 

 first attempt at animal speech. Jacob Grimm in his book on the 

 origin of speech says : " The language given to every species of 

 animal remains always uniform and unchangeable. That which 

 is innate has, because it is innate, an imperishable character." 

 How far from the truth this is may be seen from the example 

 of the dog whose bark is not merely not innate but is definitely 

 acquired in his companionship with man ; moreover, this bark 

 is not unvarying but is capable of many shades of expression 

 according to the different occasions (like the many different 

 cries of the raven). How dogs learn as the result of training to 

 communicate with men can be best instanced by the way in 

 which a dog whose master has met with an accident on the 

 road, or in the forest, will run home and there bark in peculiar 

 tones until some one follows him out to the scene of the 

 accident. 



Vocal speech in animals consists as in man of a combination 

 of tones and noises, vowels and consonants, which are partly 

 expressed as clearly as in man, partly indistinctly, and running 



