CHAPTER X. 



The Capuchin Vocabulary. — What I Have Found. — What I 

 Foresee in it. 



Up to this time I have been-able to determine, 

 with a fair degree of certainty, nine words or 

 sounds belonging to Capuchins, some of which 

 sounds are so inflected as to have two or three 

 different meanings, I think. The sound which 

 I have translated food, and found to have a much 

 wider meaning, long perplexed me, because I 

 found it used under so many conditions, and had 

 not been able to detect any difference of mod- 

 ulation. I find one form of this sound used for 

 food in general, but when modulated in a certain 

 way seems to specify the kind of food. I ob- 

 served that this sound seemed to be a salutation 

 or peace-making term with them, which I attrib- 

 uted to the fact that food was the central thought 

 of every monkey's life, and that consequently 

 that word would naturally be the most important 

 of his whole speech. During the past winter 



I found that another modulation of this word ex- 



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