OCTOBER 225 



Simois. Yet the confused sound aforesaid was made 

 up by a multitude of articulate sentences, more or less 

 grammatical and charged with meaning of some sort. 

 Was it safe to assume that the seagulls before me were 

 uttering sounds devoid of meaning ? 



Hitherto I had lain ensconced among the rocks. The 

 birds had no suspicion of my presence. I rose to my 

 feet and showed myself. Instantly the whole huge 

 assembly fell silent ; not another note was heard as the 

 birds took wing and flew off to sea. Though I could 

 not interpret their voices, their sudden silence was 

 easy to understand. Their impulse was to get away 

 as quietly as they could from what they regarded as 

 danger. If one recognises the significance of their 

 abstaining from uttering sound, can one safely pro- 

 nounce the sounds to be meaningless when uttered ? 



One cannot demonstrate the undemonstrable ; but I 

 incline strongly to the belief that animals which we 

 pronounce incapable of articulate speech, are never- 

 theless accustomed to exchange vocal information, 

 however limited in range, among themselves. Further, 

 that fishes and other creatures which utter no sounds 

 audible by man, may communicate with each other by 

 sounds which take eifect upon the hearing apparatus of 

 their own kind. It may well be that their vocabulary 

 is extremely limited, possibly, like Irish Home Rule in 

 its early days, to three F's — food, funk, and friendship ; 

 but that they have and use a vocabulary I cannot find 

 it in my understanding to doubt. 



