CHAPTER II 



Early Impression — What is Speech — First Efforts — The Phono- 

 graph — The First Record of Monkey Speech — Monkey 

 Words — Phonetics — Human Speech and Monkey Speech 



AMONG the blue hills and crystal waters of the Appa- 

 lachian Mountains, remote from the artificialities of 

 the great cities, the conditions of life under which I grew up 

 were more primitive and less complex than they are in the 

 busy centers of vast population. There nature was the 

 earliest teacher of my childhood, and domestic animals 

 were among my first companions. Among such environ- 

 ments my youth was passed, and among them I first con- 

 ceived the idea that animals talk. As a child, I believed 

 that all animals of the same kind could understand each 

 other, and I recall many instances in which they really 

 did so. 



My elders said that animals could communicate with 

 each other, but denied that they could talk. As a boy, I 

 could not forego the belief that the sounds they used were 

 speech ; and I still ask : In what respect are they not 

 speech ? This question leads us to ask another. 



What is speech ? Any oral sound, voluntarily made, for 

 the purpose of conveying a preconceived idea from the 

 mind of the speaker to the mind of another, is speech. 

 Any oral sound so made and so discharging this function 



