436 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



distinction and in declaring that his doctrine of natural necessity- 

 might be applied with equal force to many an inveterate gabbler 

 who can not hold his tongue. 



In this connection he relates the following anecdote on the 

 authority of Jules Richard : In 1857 this gentleman had occasion 

 to visit a sick friend in a hospital, where he made the acquaint- 

 ance of an old official of the institution from the south of France, 

 who was exceedingly fond of animals, his love of them being 

 equaled only by his hatred of priests ; he claimed also to be per- 

 fectly familiar with the languages of cats and dogs, and to speak 

 the language of apes even better than the apes themselves. Jules 

 Richard received this statement with an incredulous smile, where- 

 upon the old man, whose pride was evidently touched by such 

 skepticism, invited him to come the next morning to the zoologi- 

 cal garden. " I met him at the appointed time and place," says 

 Mr. Richard, " and we went together to the monkeys' cage, where 

 he leaned on the outer railing and began to utter a succession of 

 guttural sounds, which alphabetical signs are scarcely adequate 

 to represent — ' Kirruu, kirrikiu, kuruki, kirikiu ' — repeated with 

 slight variations and differences of accentuation. In a few min- 

 utes the whole company of monkeys, a dozen in number, assem- 

 bled and sat in rows before him with their hands crossed in their 

 laps or resting on their knees, laughing, gesticulating, and answer- 

 ing." The conversation continued for a full quarter of an hour, 

 to the intense delight of the monkeys, who took a lively part in it. 

 As their interlocutor was about to go away, they all became in- 

 tensely excited, climbing up on the balustrade and uttering cries 

 of lamentation ; when he finally departed and disappeared more 

 and more from their view, they ran up to the top of the cage and 

 clinging to the frieze made motions as if they were bidding him 

 good-by. It seemed, adds Mr. Richard, as though they wished 

 to say, " We are sorry to part and hope to meet again, and if you 

 can't come, do drop us a line ! " 



No one who has observed the actions and listened to the utter- 

 ances of a clever parrot will accept Mersenne's assertion that the 

 exercise of the vocal organs of animals is not free, but subject to 

 natural and irresistible necessity, or that speech is in a greater de- 

 gree the product of inevitable causation in the mouth of the cock- 

 atoo than in that of the cockney. Humboldt states that, after the 

 Aturians on the Orinoco had become extinct, the only creature 

 that could speak their language was a very aged parrot, con- 

 demned by adverse fortune to spend the remnant of its days in 

 comparative solitude as the sad survivor of a once powerful tribe. 

 From a philological point of view, the venerable bird was as 

 interesting a character as the old Cornish woman with whose 

 decease, some years ago, the dialect of her people ceased to be a 



