THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 1 57 



fabric of nature. To illustrate the slow and im- 

 perceptible yet never-ceasing, never-failing proc- 

 ess of evolution, we may imagine a man picking 

 up a single grain of sand at a certain point and 

 carrying it a distance of a thousand feet, where 

 he deposits it at another certain point; return- 

 ing, takes a second grain from the place where 

 he secured the first and carries it to the point 

 at which he deposited the first, and thus contin- 

 ues through his life. At his death his son suc- 

 ceeds him in the task and continues through his 

 life, and at the death of this man his son suc- 

 ceeds, and thus in turn each one succeeds the 

 other through a million generations. Supposing 

 the wind and rain left these grains of sand un- 

 molested during this long lapse of time, it is evi- 

 dent that at the place from which the sand was 

 taken there would be a hole, and where it was 

 deposited there would be a hill. It is by such 

 slight changes that Nature does her work, and 

 thus it is that speech, as well as matter, has been 

 transformed from what it was into what it is. 

 The physical basis of life retains its identity 

 through all those varied forms from protozoa to 

 the highest type, and so the phonetic basis of 

 speech adheres through all the changing modes 



