58 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 



quite able to get along better with the sounds 

 alone than with the signs alone. The rules by 

 which we may interpret the sounds of simian 

 speech are the same as those by which we would 

 interpret human speech. If you should be cast 

 away upon an island inhabited by some strange 

 race of people whose speech was so unlike your 

 own that you could not understand a single 

 word of it, you would watch the actions of those 

 people, and see what act they did in connection 

 with any sound they made ; and in this way you 

 would gradually learn to associate a certain 

 sound with a certain act, until at last you would 

 be able to understand the sound without see- 

 ing the act at all ; and such is the simple line I 

 have pursued in the study of the speech of this 

 little race — only I have been compelled to resort 

 to some very novel means of doing my part of 

 the talking. Since I have been so long associ- 

 ated with them, I have learned to know in many 

 cases what act they will perform in response to 

 certain sounds; and as I grow more and more 

 familiar with these sounds, I become better able 

 to distinguish them, just as we do with human 

 speech. 



Until recently I have believed that their sounds 



