THE DESCENT OB ORIGIN OF MAN 121 



of philology, observes, language is an art, like brewing or 

 baking; but writing would bave been a better simile. It 

 certainly is not a true instinct, for every language has to 

 be learned. It differs, however, widely from all ordinary 

 arts, for man has an instinctive tendency to speak, as we 

 see in the babble of our young children ; while no child has 

 an instinctive tendency to brew, bake, or write. Moreover, 

 no philologist now supposes that any language has been de- 

 liberately invented; it has been slowly and unconsciously 

 developed by many steps." ^The sounds uttered by birds 

 offer in several respects the nearest analogy to language, for 

 all the members of the same species utter the same instinc- 

 tive cries expressive of their emotions; and all the kinds 

 which sing, exert their power instinctively; but the actual 

 song, and even the call-notes, are learned from their parents 

 or foster-parents. These sounds, as Daines Barrington" has 

 proved, "are no niiore innate than language is in man." 

 XThe first attempts to sing "may be compared to the imper- 

 fect endeavor in a child to-babble. " The young males con- 

 tinue practicing, or as the bird-catchers say, "recording," 

 for ten or eleven months. Their first essays show hardly 

 a rudiment of the future song; but as they grow older we 

 can perceive what they are aiming at; and at last they are 

 said "to sing their song round." Nestlings which have 

 learned the song of a distinct species, as with the canary- 

 birds educated in the Tyrol, teach and transmit their new 

 song to their offspring. The slight natural differences of 

 song in the same species inhabiting different districts may 

 be appositely compared, as Barrington remarks, "to provin- 

 cial dialects, ' ' and the songs of allied though distinct species 



*' See some good remarks on this head by Prof. Whitney, in his "Oriental 

 and Linguistic Studies," 1813, p. 354. He observes that the desire of com- 

 munication between man is the living force, which, in the development of 

 language, "works both consciously and unconsciously ; consciously as regards 

 the immediate end to be attained ; unconsciously as regards the further conse- 

 quences of the act. ' ' 



" Hon. Daines Barrington, in "Philosoph. Transactions," ]'?'73, p. 262. 

 See also Bureau de la Malle, in "Ann. des Sc. Nat.," 3d series, Zoolog., torn. 

 X. p. 119. 



Descent — Vol I. — 6. 



