VOICE AND SPEECH. 50? 



" The difference between voice and speech is evident. The 

 former is produced in the larynx ; the latter by the peculiar 

 mechanism of the other organs above described. 



" Voice is common to both brutes and man, even immediately 

 after birth, nor is it absent in those unfortunate infants who are 

 born deaf. But speech follows only the culture and employment 

 of reason, and is consequently, like it, the privilege of man in 

 distinction to the rest of animal nature. For brutes, natural in- 

 stinct is sufficient f : but man, destitute of this and other means of 



I am indebted to the powerful Dr. Conyers Middleton for the knowledge of 

 two cases of distinct articulation with at least but little tongue. (An Enquiry into 

 the Miraculous Powers, c|-c. Miscellaneous Works, vol. i. p. 148. 4to.) In bis 

 exposure of the pious deceptions of weak and wicked Christians during the first 

 centuries of the Christian era, he notices a pretty tale of an Arian prince cutting 

 out the tongues of some of the orthodox party and these being as able to talk as 

 before ; nay one ( hominum impudentia /), who had been dumb from his birth, 

 gained the faculty of speech by losing his tongue. Granting the fact, and even 

 that the tongues were completely extirpated, he refers, for the purpose of proving 

 there was no miracle in the case, to two relations of similar instances by medical 

 men. (Jussieu, On Speech without a Tongue. Mem. de VAcad, des Sciences. 

 1718. p. 6.) Professor John Thomson found the speech little impaired after 

 bullets had carried away more or less of the tongue. (Report of Observations 

 made in the British Hospitals in Belgium, after the Battle of Waterloo ; with some 

 Remarks on Amputation.) Louis, Richter, Huxham, Bartholin, and Tulpius 

 mention similar cases. An instance of good articulation after the loss of the 

 apex and body of the tongue quite down to the os hyoides occurred in this 

 country, and was seen by the Royal Society. (Account of a Woman who spoke 

 fluently without a Vestige of Tongue. Phil. Trans. 1742. p. 143. Dr. Parson's 

 Account of Margaret Cutting, who had lost her Tongue. Phil. Trans. 1747. 

 p. 621. 



f Mr. Herbert, in a note to White's Natural History of Selborne, p. 227. 

 says he saw Col. O'Kelly's green parrot, about 1799, which sang, perfectly, 

 about fifty different tunes, solemn psalms, and humorous orjow ballads, arti- 

 culating every word as distinctly as a man, without a single mistake, beating 

 time with its foot, turning round upon the perch, and marking the time as it 

 turned ; if a person sang part of a song, it would take it up where he left off; 

 and, when moulting and unwilling to sing, turned its back and said, " Poll's 

 sick." The dog to whicli Blumenbach alludes was seen and heard by Leibnitz 

 (Op. vol. ii. p. 180. ii.), who declares it pronounced all the letters of the 

 alphabet except m, n, x, and thirty German words ; was three years old when 

 it went to school, and required some years for finishing its education. Locke, 

 however, goes farther than Leibnitz, for he relates a story in his Essay on Human 



