Chap. II. 
MENTAL POWERS. 
55 
As Horne Tooke, one of the founders of the noble 
science of philology, observes, language is an art, like 
brewing or baking ; but writing would have been a 
much more appropriate simile. It certainly is not a 
true instinct, as every language has to be learnt. It 
differs, however, widely from all ordinary arts, for man 
has an instinctive tendency to speak, as we see in the 
babble of our young children ; whilst no child has an 
instinctive tendency to brew, bake, or write. Moreover, 
no philologist now supposes that any language has 
been deliberately invented ; each has been slowly and 
unconsciously developed by many steps. The sounds 
uttered by birds offer in several respects the nearest 
analogy to language, for all the members of the same 
species utter the same instinctive cries expressive of 
their emotions ; and all the kinds that have the power 
of singing exert this power instinctively ; but the actual 
song, and even the call-notes, are learnt from their 
parents or foster-parents. These sounds, as Daines 
Barrington 33 has proved, “ are no more innate than 
“ language is in man.” The first attempts to sing 
may be compared to the imperfect endeavour in a 
“ child to babble.” The young males continue prac- 
tising, or, as the bird-catchers say, recording, for ten 
or eleven months. Their first essays show hardly & 
rudiment of the future song; but as they grow older 
we can perceive what they are aiming at ; and at last 
they are said “ to sing their song round.” Nestlings 
which have learnt the song of a distinct species, as 
with the canary-birds educated in the Tyrol, teach and 
transmit their new song to their offspring. The slight 
natural differences of song in the same species inha- 
33 Hon. Daines Barrington in 4 Philosoph. Transactions,’ 1773, p. 
-262. See also Bureau de la Malle, in 1 Ann. des Se. Nat.’ 3rd series, 
-Zoolog. tom. x. p. 119. 
