94 The Ajuericaji Naturalist. [March, 
the human faculties than by a comparison with those of (other) 
animals," and vice versa the same will hold in an inquiry like 
the one now before us. In the evolution of language as in 
everything else, we may recognize the all-pervading unity of 
plan and purpose, the " one law, one element and one far-off 
divine event to which," not man alone, but " the whole crea- 
tion moves." This granted, the wealth of all past philological 
research is at our disposal and by so much are we warned of 
quicksand hypotheses and set upon a theory of some endur- 
Perhaps the theory most generally accepted as accounting 
for the origin of human language, is the onomatopoetic or 
mimetic, coupled with that elaborated by Wedgewood, — the 
interjectional or exclamatory theory. Wedgewood's theory 
has more to do with the original and instinctive sounds which 
form the primitive utterances of the speaking animal, while the 
mimetic accounts for the subsequent development of language 
into an art. Leaving all discussion of the tenability of these in 
their application to human language, let us apply them to 
birds. 
The most cursory study of the songs of our feathered favor- 
ites must lead every inquirer to believe them the result of imi- 
tation, and a more critical examination would demonstrate that 
not only does this apply to the transmission of song from one 
generation to another, but it may be held to account for the 
origin and development of all bird-language in the past. 
Consonant with our proposition, we find among the least 
specialized of avian forms that language is limited to half audi- 
ble hissing or choking sounds or even to life-long silence, — an 
attempt merely, with sure-attendant failure. In such, language 
has been doomed to perpetual infancy; development in this 
direction has done nothing, has nought to do with it ; it is not 
this noise or that noise, but a noise they are trying to make. 
The primal death-birth of speech is the result. Except as a 
proof that language, out of the chaos of silence, had a begin- 
ning so dumbly weak and abortive, we here have nothing to do 
with it either. Next come such as have found a tongue ; an 
