92 The American Naturalist. [March, 
any one language, have an equal application to all the rest. 
It is quite generally conceded that the present status of human 
language is the result of slow developement or evolution from 
the innate, inarticulate and exclamatory utterances of our hu- 
man progenitors. 
We see apt illustration of this in the gesticulations and cries 
of. the newly born of man, bird or beast; which cries, origina- 
ting in the primal idea of want, are its natural, spontaneous ex- 
pression, and, in consonance with the other faculties, develop 
through early life to maturity, furnishing, in the momentary 
individual life, a brief, actual epitome of the genesis of language 
through successive generations in the infinite past. Therefore 
in so far as he may have " no knowledge but a cry " man may 
account himself not only a little lower than the angels, but 
quite as low as the creatures over whom he has dominion. 
Thus far language is an instinct common to all, and, in nature, 
identical among all animals; a conclusion necessitating in us 
the sort of humility which nowadays leavens all progressive 
Of language, in its original and primitive exercise, such a 
view is tenable, but in its wider acceptation, as Home Tooke 
remarks, — " language is an art, the developement of which is 
consonant with that of the mental faculties," and it is reason- 
able to infer that while articulate language (speech) is peculiar 
to man, distinctly separating him, as Cuvier states, from other 
animals, " it is not the mere power of articulation that distin- 
guishes man from the other animals, for as every one knows, 
parrots can talk, but it is his larger power of connecting defin- 
ite sounds with definite ideas." ^ 
It follows therefore, that the language of birds differs not in 
kind from that of man, though far removed therefrom in degree 
of perfection as an art. Allowing for the difference in mental 
capacity, betwixt man and the lower animals, the comparative 
attainments among men in the linguistic art exhibit disparities 
no greater than may daily be observed of birds inter se. As 
the singing of a thrush to the chatter of sparrows, so the solo 
' Descent of Man. Vol. I., P. 53. 
