LANGUAGE IN LOWER MAN. 285 



character is very limited or rudimentary. Thus certain 

 aborigines of Borneo have no language of their own, and 

 only learn with great labour to pronounce a few Malay 

 words (Biichner). Savage peoples have frequently no mne- 

 monic signs ; the language of expression in them is much 

 the same as it is in many animals. Thus their mode of 

 salutation or greeting is not more expressive, consisting as 

 it does either of 



1. Some simple gesture. 



2. Touching noses ; or 



3. Eubbing other parts of the body against each other. 

 Or their language consists of mere inarticulate sounds of 



the nature of shrieks e.g. in certain natives of the Philippine 

 Islands or among the South African Bushmen. Brazilian 

 Botokudos ' speak little to one another, but rather mutually 

 grunt and snuffle.' The Apache Indian c speaks little, and 

 rather in gesture than sounds.' The speech of the Fans of 

 Western Africa is a collection of gutturals, unintelligible to 

 white races ; it ' can scarcely be called a language in the 

 human sense of that word.' The talk of the savages of 

 Borneo and Sumatra is described as a sort of cackle or croak. 

 6 Generally savages are accustomed to talk more by gesture 

 and looks ' than by voice. Thus the Yeddas of Ceylon 

 use only * signs, grimaces, and guttural sounds (Biichner). 

 Houzeau remarks on the paucity of letter sounds in savage 

 languages. 



Various classes of human idiots neither speak nor under- 

 stand speech ; others speak, but do not understand speech 

 (Ireland). Their only voice-sounds are frequently mere 

 ii-Jtines or cries (Hitchman). Their defects or peculiarities of 

 voice and speech have been commented on by many of those 

 authorities who have had special opportunities of studying 

 the phenomena of idiocy. One microcephalic idiot described 

 by Professor Cesare Lombroso chirped like a bird ; a second 

 paralytic idiot, described by the same authority, 'cannot 

 speak, or even converse by signs.' The absence of spoken 

 language, non-understanding of man's speech, words, or 

 phrases, howling or yelling by night and whining by day, are 

 among the bestial traits or habits of the wolf-children of 

 India. 



