278 THE HUMAN SPECIES 



expressing the various feelings. Their cry of terror is quite 

 distinct, consisting of a series of short ejaculations of a quaver- 

 ing discordant note which always conveys a warning to flee. 

 That is, however, all. Long before Brehm, Bergmann and 

 Leuckart 1 expressed their surprise that monkeys, with their 

 well-known powers of mimicry and a mouth and larynx almost 

 identical with that of man, cannot imitate a word of human 

 speech, although many birds (raven, starling, magpie, parrot) 

 learn to speak readily. Professor Marshall conjectures that 

 this difference must be attributed to the fact that the animal 

 has on the whole quite as sharp, but not as delicate, hearing as 

 the bird. Whether the difference is not to be sought for in the 

 organisation of the brain rather than in the sense of hearing 

 remains uncertain. At any rate the surprise of these observers 

 that monkeys cannot imitate human speech is fully justified. 

 " But," I hear Garner say, "monkeys have absolutely no need 

 to imitate words, for they have their own language." Mr. R. 

 L. Garner 2 undertook the task of studying the language of 

 apes, and sought out all over America monkeys in captivity 

 both in zoological gardens and privately owned ; he took 

 phonographic records of the sounds they made so as to observe 

 the effect of reproducing their voices upon other monkeys of 

 the same or another species. He worked for the most part 

 with the small new-world ape, but also with the old-world 

 Javan ape, the common macacus, an anubis baboon and a 

 chimpanzee. From these old-world apes Garner maintains 

 that he has found a rudimentary language ; for instance, from 

 a chimpanzee he has, with the aid of the phonograph, distin- 

 guished seven tones although he is not able to explain their 

 meaning, while from the tones of the capuchin and sapajou 

 ape, in spite of the difficulty of apprehending them rightly, he 

 believes he arrived at satisfactory meanings. One sound of 

 the capuchin ape Garner interprets as " milk, food ". It is an 

 indescribable, deep guttural sound as recorded on the phono- 

 graph, which is rapidly followed by a higher-pitched clucking 

 sound. The complete sound is something like schu-uh-uh. 

 Another sound in the language of the capuchin ape Garner 



1 Anatom.-physiol. Ubersicht des Tierreichs, Stuttgart, 1852, p. 433. 



2 Garner, Die Sprache der Affen, Leipzig, 1906. 



