ARTIFICIAL OR ARTICULATE LANGUAGE. 295 



It is a curious fact, that many animals which are naturally dumb in the 

 widest sense of the word, are possest of a power of producing sounds by the 

 use of some external organ or foreign instrument, that forms a very con- 

 venient substitute for a natural tongue. 1 have formerly had occasion to 

 observe this of the goat-chaffer or cerambyx, which, whenever taken, utters 

 a shrill shriek of fright, by rubbing its chest against its wing-shells, and the 

 upper part of its abdomen ; and of the ptinus fastidicus^ or death-watch, 

 that produces its measured, and to the superstitious, alarming strokes, by 

 striking its horny frontlet against the bed-post, or any other hard substance 

 in which it takes its stand. The termes Puhatorium, or tick- watch, is an 

 insect of a different order ; but armed with a similar apparatus, and makes 

 a noise by the same means, like tlie ticking of a watch, from the old wood 

 or decayed furniture in which it loves to reside, and by which it endeavours 

 to entice the other sex to its company. And it is a singular circumstance, 

 which I shall merely glance at in passing, that some species of the wood- 

 pecker, in the breeding season, in consequence of the feebleness of its 

 natural voice, makes use of a similar kind of call by strong reiterated 

 strokes of the bill against a dead sonorous branch of a tree. 



The most astonishing instance, however, of sound excited in this man- 

 ner, is that made by two species of Italian grasshoppers ; the cicada Ple- 

 beja, and c. orni. The music of these insects (which is confmed to the 

 male) is produced by a very singular apparatus, that consists of several 

 winding cells under the abdomen, separated by different membranes, and 

 opening externally by two narrow valves. In the centre of these cells is 

 contained a scaly sonorous triangle, and exterior to them are two vigoious 

 muscles, by the action of which the cells are supplied with air through one 

 of the valves, and so powerfully reverberate it against the triangle as to 

 produce the notes of which the grasshopper's song consists ; and which is 

 sometitnes so loud that a single insect hung in a cage has almost drowned 

 the voices of a large company. This song is also the madrigal of love. 



But highly tempting as it is, I must not pursue this part of our subject 

 any farther. From the birds of the field, to the grasshopper, from the bee 

 to the fly, every attentive natuialist observes in every tribe, a vast com- 

 pass of accentuation, and comprehends the meaning of a great variety of 

 their tones. But what is the little that we understand to what is under- 

 stood by themselves, formed with similar orgar?s, in a thousand instances 

 more acute than our own, actuated by similar wants, and proposing to 

 themselves similar pursuits ! 



What the natural language of man is we know not. There can be no 

 doubt, however, that if, by a miracle, he were to be deprived of all artifi- 

 cial language, there would still retain to him, from the perfection of his 

 vocal organs, a language of this kind, and of far greater extent and variety 

 than that of any other animal. 



But some schools of philosophers have not been satisfied with contem- 

 plating such an idea hypothetically ; they have boldly embodied it into a 

 fact, and have contended, and still continue to contend, that such a lan- 

 guage has actually existed ; and that it constituted the sole language of 

 man on his first formation : the only means he possest of communicating 

 and interchanging his ideas. 



But whence then has artificial language arisen ? That rich variety of 

 tongues that distinguishes the difl^erent nations on the earth ; and that 

 wonderful facility which is common to many of them of characterizing every 

 distinct idea by a distinct term ? 



