196 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 



The monkeys themselves, moreover, were not always 

 inclined to give utterance to any sound. One cannot go 

 into a menagerie, and select and interview a monkey, 

 and discover new words or interpret new sounds at will. 

 Monkeys are not loquacious, and if the investigator suc- 

 ceeds in making them talk, he cannot have an ex- 

 pression of general well-being, or of anger or of joy, 

 made to order. And if after all success had been gain- 

 ed, if one of the monkeys had condescended to utter a 

 sound, it was often, or rather nearly always impossible 

 to fix it by means of letters, so that they could be recall- 

 ed and compared with other sounds. We must admit 

 that many of our own sounds are not expressed by the 

 letters of the alphabet, and many of them are not re- 

 ducible to any literal expression, as for instance the 

 sound very poorly represented by " umph — humph," or 

 any utterance of an infant's voice which we might vain- 

 ly try to express in letters. And yet this is, by com- 

 parison, one of the easiest things to bring within the 

 reach of the alphabet, being made by human vocal 

 organs with all the advantages of heredity. 



Is it any wonder that progress of Mr. Garner's re- 

 searches was very slow, that results were often barely 

 appreciable, even to a trained ear ? Should we be aston- 

 ished if we learned that he gave up his investigations in 

 despair and in disgust, as no man's patience could stand 

 that permanent, heavy pressure and that humiliating 

 and depressing feeling of constant failures ? Indeed, he 

 was about being shipwrecked, when the Edison phono- 

 graph made its appearance. Do we wonder when we 

 hear that Mr. Garner spent a sleepless night, thinking 

 over the possibilities of such a recording instrument ? 

 He made use of it at once. It simplified matters, for 

 the only thing for him to do now was to receive the 

 sounds which monkeys make, on a cylinder and, having 

 obtained a good record, to take it home and study it. 



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