1884.] 
Thoughts on Imitation. 477 
with persons, things, and actions. It is nothing unusual for 
such birds to call the members of the family correctly by 
name, to exclaim “ good morning ” when anyone first enters 
the room in the morning, to call out “good-bye ” if anyone 
is leaving. My parrot above mentioned has more than once 
on seeing water drawn from a tap, cried out : “ Water, 
water ! Polly wants ! ” Another, belonging to a late medical 
fiiend of mine, if she saw any kind of food being consumed, 
especially fruit, always said : “ Give Polly a bit if you 
please ! ” Another parrot, an ill-tempered, noisy bird, the 
property of an extensive taxidermist, when she has been 
screeching, generally finishes by saying : “ You devil, what 
is this row for ? ” Thus we have full proof that “ mere 
imitation ” implies not only a recollection of words, per se, 
but their remembrance in connection with all the attendant 
circumstances. So that henceforth the sight of a person or 
objeCt, or the occurrence of an aCLion suggests to a parrot 
the words. Here, therefore, in addition to memory there is 
association. It need scarcely be said that all the powers of 
observing, retaining, and associating sounds possessed by 
parrots and certain other birds would go for nothing if they 
had not in addition well developed vocal organs, and if, 
further, their nerve centres were not highly specialised. 
The higher birds thus learn the use of language in the 
same manner, though not to the same degree, as do we in 
our childhood. 
It is remarkable how completely metaphysicians and 
philologians forget the imitative origin of language in man. 
Some of them incline to the opinion that language is not a 
faculty which has been gradually developed, but a divinely 
implanted power. Such thinkers might do well to consider 
that children who have been brought up by wild animals, 
e.g., among Pariah dogs in India, are mute ; that not only 
those who have the misfortune to be born deaf are also, but 
that children who have at different ages become deaf from 
disease lose the power of speech. Hartmann, in his work 
“ Deaf-Mutism,” gives, if I remember aright, an instance of 
this occurring even as late as the tenth year of life. Hence 
language in man, as in the parrot, is simply due to imitation, 
and where such imitation is excluded by deafness, or by the 
absence of human society, he, too, is, according to a common 
cant phrase, one of the “ dumb animals,” How the anti- 
evolutionists can justify their theory of the origin of speech 
in the face of these fadts I do not see. 
The imitation of the actions and gestures of man, or of 
