200 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 



but with a language of sounds, and that he, Mr. Grarner, 

 himself, was able to talk with many monkeys which 

 understood him and gave answers. We must not sup- 

 pose, of course, that such a conversation was a connected 

 one, such as could be carried on with a man; but he 

 could ascertain from them that they wanted food or 

 drink : he was warned by them of the approach of 

 danger, and often the monkeys did not hesitate to tell 

 him that they liked or disliked him. " In many of 

 these cases," says Mr. Garner, "my knowledge of the 

 desire of my subject was as perfect as could have been 

 conveyed to me by any vehicle of human thought, and 

 since these sounds discharge every function of speech, I 

 cannot see wherein they are not speech." 



The most powerful, the most convenient agent for 

 those proofs was again the phonograph. As mentioned 

 before, we can get a perfect imitation of the original 

 sound by turning the cylinder backward. To begin 

 with an amusing experiment, Mr. Garner tried one 

 record of monkeys, which evidently had been in a great 

 fury, on an Italian who happened to enter his office in 

 search of a little monkey for the organ-grinding busi- 

 ness. As soon as those sounds came out, the Italian's 

 eyes sparkled, his big mouth, his square white teeth 

 were disclosed, he looked amazed, and from his tightly 

 squeezed lips came the word in the best English he could 

 afford, " Monk he mad." 



Much m'ore striking it is, however, to play the phono- 

 graph sounds on the monkeys themselves, as in this case 

 we get sure proof that the sound means something, that 

 they understand it and act accordingly. So one day a 

 batch of brand new monkeys had been bought, however, 

 not yet put in their regular quarters, but into another 

 room. Mr. Garner went to them with his phonograph 

 in which he had the record of the hunger cry of other 

 monkeys that belonged to the same species. As soon as 



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