ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 107 



nally fortuitous circumstances followed by strictly mechani- 

 cal adaptation to the infinitely varying conditions of exist- 

 ence. The truth should be clearly recognized that there is 

 no fixed limit to the number and variety of sounds which 

 speech may embrace except that which the capacity of the 

 organs of speech for producing such sounds presents. If all 

 the adjustments of which these organs are capable could 

 be definitely known and accurately described in terms of the 

 mechanical changes necessary to produce them, and each 

 such species of sound, as we may say, were then conveniently 

 named according to the methods of science, then the various 

 syllables of a new language might be referred to established 

 orders and classes, genera and species, and the science of 

 phonolog} r historically established. It might then be seen 

 how utterly fortuitous the character of every language has 

 been within the limits of its possibilities, and the immense 

 diversity of languages, not in their word-units and sentence- 

 units alone, but in their sound-units as well, would be no 

 more inexplicable than are the variations which we see in 

 animal and plant forms. The primary principle in acquir- 

 ing a foreign pronunciation is to learn and to adopt the ac- 

 curate position of the organs of the mouth ; in fact, could 

 this in all cases be done, failure to pronounce correctly would 

 be a physical impossibility, since the sound is in each case 

 the mechanical result of the relations of the speaking organ- 

 ism and can no more differ from the character fixed by these 

 relations than the pitch or timbre of a musical instrument 

 can be other than that which its strings, keys, materials, &c, 

 require it to be. 



Mr. Ward then took up the letters and commented upon a 

 considerable number of them with a view to pointing out 

 undifferentiated sounds in modern languages, and also in 

 order to emphasize certain errors into which different lexi- 

 cographers have fallen and certain failures on their part to 

 recognize distinctions almost universally made by English- 

 speaking people. This was particularly striking in certain 

 letters mentioned. 



