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between the brain of man and that of the ape, as a proof that 
the latter possessed the rudiments of speech in an undeveloped 
form. 
Of all the branches of knowledge, there are none more in- 
teresting than the study of language. Man shares with animals 
the power of emitting sounds by means of an apparatus es- 
pecially adapted for that purpose ; sound being described as a 
particular movement of ponderable matter capable of affecting 
the organ of hearing. Man alone, however, possesses the 
power of regulating and systematizing these sounds, so as to 
transmit to others the impressions of his mind in the form of a 
language, which has been described as a sensible phenomenon 
by which thought becomes materialized. In fact, speech or 
language consists of a series of conventional sounds, which 
represent a meaning which the mind has previously attached to 
their expression. There are two distinct features in speech, — 
an act of the intelligence, and a sonorous mechanism. These 
have been termed cognitive and executive, — thought-speech and 
spoken-speech ; the internal and external speech of M. 
Bouillaud. Here I would remark that it is important not to 
confound the faculty of articulate language with the general 
faculty of language, and Professor Broca's remarks on this 
subject are so lucid and terse that I cannot do better than 
transcribe them : — “ There are several kinds of language; 
every system of signs which permits the expression of ideas in 
a manner more or less intelligible, more or less complete, or 
more or less rapid, is a language in the general sense of the 
word: thus speech, mimicry, dactylology, writing both hiero- 
glyphic and phonetic, are so many kinds of language. There 
is a general faculty of language which presides over all these 
modes of expression of thought, and which may be defined, 
the faculty of establishing a constant relation between an idea 
and a sign, be this sign a sound, a gesture, a figure, or a drawing 
of any kind." 
Here we must inquire whether language is the exclusive pre- 
rogative of man ? Some would answer this question in the 
negative, and M. Lemoine, in a highly philosophical treatise, 
entitled “ La Physiognomie et la Parole” devotes a chapter to 
Le Langage des Betes, and a celebrated French anthropologist, 
M. Coudereau, maintains that man is not alone in possessing a 
language ; that all species of animals possess one, varied, but 
sufficient to express their ideas. He further says that “ man 
acquires the faculty of speech by his memory, labour, and 
imitation,— « the parrot does no more. From a linguistic stand- 
point, this faculty is in its nature identical in man and animals f 
