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APPENDIX. 



A LONG public controversy upon the foregoing paper having arisen outside 

 the Victoria Institute, I venture to ask permission to refer to the main 

 arguments of those who have taken up views opposite to my own, and to say 

 a few words in reply. It has appeared strange that several who have taken 

 part in that controversy should seemingly, and without sufficient warrant, claim 

 for man a descent from the anthropoid ape, and with an ardour reminding 

 one of those who, in former days, strove with so much anxiety to trace their 

 ancestry to some on the roll of Battle Abbey. Whilst acknowledging the 

 earnestness of my opponents, I cannot see that they have in the smallest 

 degree weakened the position taken up in my paper, which was, that in 

 language we possessed a difference of kind between Man and. the Ape, 

 which Mr. Darwin asserts his inability to find. 



My first opponent enters the list with the assertion that language is not an 

 attribute universally belonging to the human race, and that there are tribes 

 of savages who have " 7iothing of the kind,^' adding, that if such be the case, 

 ^' Dr. Bateman's argument falls to the ground." Of course it does, and I 

 stake my anti-Darwinian position upon the point thus raised. Let us see 

 what he advances in favour of his theory. He refers me to a well-known 

 book of travel, the " Voyage in the Beagle" where it is stated that the 

 Fuegian savages can only cluck like a hen. Now, I have referred to the 

 passage to which my attention is called, and I find that this description of 

 the Fuegian savages is by Mr. Darwin himself, who was the naturalist to 

 the expedition in which the Beagle was engaged. From Mr. Darwin's 

 account of this singular race, it is evident that they did possess articulate 

 speech, for although they gave no evidence of conversational powers, Mr. 

 Darwin says, They could repeat with perfect correctness each word in 

 the sentence addressed to them, and they remembered such words for some 

 time." Hence it is evident that they possessed the faculty of language, although 

 in an imperfectly developed form. Now these Fuegians are described in 

 " The Descent of Man," as ranking amongst the lowest barbarians ; the lowest 

 barbarians, therefore, not only possess the power of speech, but are capable of 

 even learning a foreign tongue, for those brought over to England in the 

 Beagle are actually described as being able to talk a little English.* The 

 acquisition of articulate language is, in a great measure, the result of imita- 



■* " Narrative of the Surveying Voyages of the Adventure and Beagle," 

 vol. ii. pp. 2, 121, and 189. 



