upper part of the larynx, and into which the air is driven as it ascends from the lungs through the trachea, instead of being driven into the glottis, where alone it could acquire modulation and articulate sounds. From this sac or bag it afterward passes into the mouth by a variety of small apertures or fissures, by which almost the whole of its force, and consequently of its vocal effect, is lost. This peculiar conformation appears first to have been noticed by Galen, who traced it through several varieties both of the ape and monkey families; but for the most correct account of it we are indebted to Professor Camper, who, in a paper published in the Philosophical Transactions for 1779, minutely describes it as it exists in the sylvanus or pigmy, in which Tyson had overlooked it; in various other species of the ape; in the cynosurus or dog-tailed monkey; and in many others of the monkey tribe. At all adventures, the monkey has a peculiar deficiency of natural tongue; and we hence obtain an insuperable objection, had we no others, but which, I have already shown, are sufficiently abundant,* to the declaration of Lord Monboddo and Linnæus, that this tribe are all of the same original stock as man; and their absurd story that man himself is not unfrequently to be met with in some of the Asiatic islands, with a monkey-tail, varying in length from three or four inches to a foot, possessing as great a fluency of speech as in any part of Europe. Marcgrave, in his history of Brazil, has amused us with an account of a very extraordinary species of American sapajou, which Linnæus has called Beelzebub,-Buffon, Ouarine, and our own countryman Mr. Pennant, Preachermonkey, that assemble in large groups every morning and evening, and attentively listen to a loud and long-continued harangue of one of the tribe, whom he seems to suppose a public officer or popular demagogue. Upon the authority of Marcgrave, this species has been admitted into all our books of Natural History; but there are some doubts concerning it, and the description is at least without the support of concurrent testimony. The different accents of the dog and the horse, when under the influence of rage, desire, or exultation, are too powerful and too common not to have been noticed by almost every one. It is impossible to describe the different tones of the mastiff more precisely than in the words of the truly philosophical poet I have so lately referred to; but as it would be improper to quote him in the original before a popular audience, I must request of you to receive a feeble translation of him in its stead: When half enraged The rude Molossian mastiff, her keen teeth Threats, than when rous'd to madness more extreme, Or when she barks, and fills the world with roar. Thus, when her fearless whelps, too, she, with tongue Urg'd clamorous through the mansion when alone, Or the shrill howl her trembling bosom heaves, The language of the tiger, leopard, and cat is not so rich or diversified as that of the dog; but they have still a considerable variation in the scale of their mewings, according to the predominant passion of fear or grief: while Series 11. Lecture iii. On the Varieties of the Human Race. Longe alio sonitu rabies districta minatur, these again differ from the accent of simple pleasure, which consists in purring, and very considerably indeed from the loud and dissonant voice of love. The language of birds is, in almost every instance, strikingly musical, though not equally eloquent, whatever be the passion it describes. To its variety in the different tribes of the osprey, hawk, sea-gull, rook, and raven, and especially as auguring wet or dry, stormy or serene weather, almost every naturalist has borne testimony: for each can say, that Cawing rooks and kites, that swim sublime In still repeated circles, screaming loud, Upon the exquisitely varied tones and modulations of the singing birds we descanted at some length in a former lecture. But the subject is as interesting as it is inexhaustible; and in the summer-season of praise, when the heart of man overflows, or should overflow, with gratitude to his beneficent Creator for the return of plenteousness that meets his eye in every direction, with what animation do they join in the general carol; awakening us at the dawn, accompanying us through the day, and softening and harmonizing, and I fear not to add, spiritualizing our feelings at nightfall. The robin, and not the lark, as commonly supposed, takes the lead, and seems longing for the day to unclose. His gentle voice is in sweet accordance with the feeble beams of the early twilight; and as soon as the glorious sun makes his appearance, then up mounts the lark, and pours forth his more vigorous song; a thousand warblers hear the call, and the chorus is full and complete. The leaders vary, but the carol continues. The nightingale yet protracts his nocturnal tones; and the thrush, the blackbird, and the goldfinch, from the lofty grove, the close thicket, or the blossomed orchard, intermingle their rival pretensions: while the transient but mellow burst of the cuckoo adds a richness to the general harmony; and even the croak of the raven, and the chattering of the daw, only break into the symphony, with an occasional discord that heightens the impressive effect. At length the sun is no more: the unbounded concert dies away; and the season of rest returns. It returns, but not with mute silence; for the night is soothed rather than disturbed by the solitary song of the robin, now resuming his modest strain, and yielding in succession to the peerless pipe of the nightingale, and the deep-toned but expressive hoot of the owl. The note of the wren (motacilla Troglodytes) is as slender as its form, but it is well worth noticing, as being the only note of the feathered creation that is continued throughout the winter. During the season of frost and snow it is, indeed, heard to most advantage; for the fearless little songster then enters the court-yard, the stable, or the dairy, and seeks, in confidence, his food of insects or their larves. It is this that constitutes the little beggar's petition; and where is the heart so hardened as to refuse the request he then offers ? With respect to singing birds, indeed, of all kinds, we may make this pleasing observation, that, as though chiefly intended, in the general munificence of the great Parent of the human race, to captivate mankind, they almost always reside in their vicinity, and are rarely to be found in the uninhabited parts of the earth. Task, book i. ↑ Series 11. Lecture 1., on Zoological Systems, and the Distinctive Characters of Animals. See Jenner, Phil. Trans. 1824, p. 37. The following passage from Dr. Jenner's very admirable paper "On the Migration of Birds," has a passage so directly in accordance with these remarks, that I cannot avoid copying it from the Phil. Tram. for 1824: "We must observe, that nature never gives one property only, to the same individual substance. Through every gradation, from the clod we tread upon to the glorious sun which animates the whole terrestrial system, we may find a vast variety of purposes for which the same body was created. If we look on the simplest vegetable, or the reptile it supports, how various, yet how important in the economy of nature, are the offices they are intended to perform. The migrating bird, I have said, is directed to this But the vocabulary of the common cock and hen is, perhaps, the most extensive of any tribe of birds with which we are acquainted; or rather, perhaps, we are better acquainted with the extent of its range than with that of any others. The cock has his watch-word for announcing the morning, his love-speech, and his terms of defiance. The voice of the hen, when she informs her paramour that she is disburdened of an egg, and which he instantly communicates from homestead to homestead, till the whole village is in an uproar, is far different from that which acquaints him that the brood is just hatched; and both again are equally different from the loud and rapid cries with which she undauntedly assails the felon fox that would rob her of her young. Even the little chick, when not more than four or five days old, exhibits a harsher and less melodious clacking when offered for food what it dislikes, than when it perceives what it relishes.* Before I quit this part of our subject it becomes me also to remark, that even in various other tribes of animals than the three classes to which our observations have hitherto applied, we occasionally meet with proofs of an inferior kind of natural language, though it cannot with propriety be called a language of the voice. And I may here observe, that among the few of these three classes which we have already noticed as being destitute of a vocal larynx, the bounty of nature has often provided a substitute. Thus the wapiti (cervus Wapiti of Barton), though without the sonorous endowment of the horse or ox, seems to have a compensation in an organ that consists of an oblique slit or opening under the inner angle of each eye, nearly an inch long externally, which appears also to be an auxiliary to the nostril; for with this he makes a noise that he can vary at pleasure, and which is not unlike the loud and piercing whistle that boys give by putting their fingers in their mouth.† Among insects, however, we find a still more varied talent of uttering sounds, though possessed neither of lungs nor larynx, nor the nasal slit of the wapiti. The bee, the fly, the gnat, and the beetle afford familiar instances of this extraordinary faculty. The sphinx Atropos, a species of hawk-moth, squeaks, when hurt, nearly as loud as a mouse; it has even the power, in certain circumstances, of uttering a plaintive note, which cannot fail to excite deep commiseration. If a bee or wasp be attacked near its own hive, the animal expresses its pain or indignation in a tone so different from its usual hum, that the complaint is immediately understood by the hive within; when the inhabitants hurry out to revenge the insult in such numbers, that the offender is fortunate if he escape without a severe castigation. The cunning spider often avails himself of the natural tone of distress uttered by the fly to make sure of him for his prey. He frequently spreads out his webs or toils to such an extent that he cannot see from one end of island at a certain season of the year to produce and rear its young. This appears to be the grand intention which nature has in view; but in consequence of the observation just made, its presence here may answer many secondary purposes; among these I shall notice the following: The beneficent Author of nature seems to spare no pains in cheering the heart of man with every thing that is delightful in the summer season. We may be indulged with the company of these visiters, perhaps, to heighten, by the novelty of their appearance, and pleasing variety of their notes, the native scenes. How sweetly, at the return of spring, do the notes of the cuekoo first burst upon the ear; and what apathy must that soul possess, that does not feel a soft emotion at the song of the nightingale (surely it must be "fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils"), and how wisely is it contrived that a general stillness should prevail while this heavenly bird is pouring forth its plaintive and melodious strains,-strains that so sweetly accord with the evening hour! Some of our foreign visiters, it may be said, are inharmonious minstrels, and rather disturb than aid the general concert. In the midst of a soft warm summer's day, when the martin is gently floating on the air, not only pleasing us with the peculiar delicacy of its note, but with the elegance of its meandering; when the blackcap is vying with the goldfinch, and the linnet with the woodlark, a dozen swifts rush from some neighbouring battlement, and set up a most discordant screaming. Yet all is perfect. The interruption is of short duration, and without it the long-continued warbling of the softer singing birds would pall and tire the listening ear with excess of melody, as the exhilarating beams of the sun, were they not at intervals intercepted by clouds, would rob the heart of the gayety they for a while inspire, and sink it into languor. There is a perfect consistency in the order in which nature seems to have directed the singing birds to fill up the day with their pleasing harmony. To an observer of those divine laws which harmonize the general order of things, there appears a design in the arrangement of this sylvan minstrelsy. It is not in the haunted meadow, nor frequented field, we are to expect the gratification of indulging ourselves in this pleasing speculation to its full extent; we must seek for it in the park, the forest, or some sequestered dell, half enclosed by the coppice or the wood." See Phil. Mag. No. 223, Nov. 1816, p. 392. * See White's Hist. of Selborne, vol. ii. p. 17. them to the other; and often conceals himself in some adjoining crevice where he cannot see the poor animal as it becomes ensnared: but he sits wistfully listening for the buzzing noise that assures him the fly is entangled, and is fluttering to make its escape. He hears the well-known signal, sallies forth from his concealment, and riots on the spoil that has fallen into his power, with all the eagerness and ferocity that distinguish the most rapacious quadrupeds. Whether fishes possess any similar means of communicating their feelings we know not. Reasoning from the facts that a few of them occasionally utter tones of distress when first taken; and that they possess an organ of hearing, and live in a medium well adapted to the propagation of sound, it is generally conjectured that they have a language of some kind or other: but our knowledge of their usual habits, from their residing in a different element from our own, is so imperfect, that we have no positive data to build upon. It is a curious fact, that many animals, which are naturally dumb in the widest sense of the word, are possessed of a power of producing sounds, by the use of some external organ or foreign instrument, that forms a very convenient substitute for a natural tongue. I 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 fatidicus, 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 Pulsatorium, 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 the 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 woodpecker, 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 manner, is that made by two species of Italian grasshoppers: the cicada Plebeja, and c. orni. The music of these insects (which is confined 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 vigorous 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 sometimes 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 naturalist observes, in every tribe, a vast compass of accentuation, and comprehends the meaning of a great variety of their tones. But what is the little that we understand to what is understood by themselves, formed with similar organs, in a thousand instances more acute than our ówn, 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 artificial language, there would still remain 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 contemplating such an idea hypothetically; they have boldly imbodied it into a fact, and have contended, and still continue to contend, that such a language has actually existed; and that it constituted the sole language of man on his first formation: the only means he possessed of communicating and interchanging his ideas. But whence, then, has artificial language arisen? That rich variety of tongues which distinguishes the different nations on the earth; and that wonderful facility which is common to many of them of characterizing every distinct idea by a distinct term? And here such philosophers are divided: some contending that speech is a science that was determined upon and inculcated in an early period of the world, by one, or at least by a few superior persons acting in concert, and inducing the multitude around them to adopt their articulate and arbitrary sounds; while others affirm that it has grown progressively out of the natural language, as the increasing knowledge and increasing wants of mankind have demanded a more extensive vocabulary.* Pythagoras first started the former of these two hypotheses, and it was afterward adopted by Plato, and supported by all the rich treasure of his genius and learning; but it was ably opposed by the Epicureans, on the ground that it must have been equally impossible for any one person, or even for a synod of persons, to have invented the most difficult and abstruse of all human sciences, with the paucity of ideas, and the means of communicating ideas, which, under such circumstances, they must have possessed: and that, even allowing they could have invented such a science, it must still have been utterly impossible for them to have taught it to the barbarians around them. The argument is thus forcibly urged by Lucretius, whom I must again beg leave to present in an English dress : But, to maintain that one devis'd alone Terms for all nature, and th' incipient tongue Whence sprang the knowledge of their use? or how Could the first linguist to the crowds around Teach what he meant? his sole unaided arm Could ne'er o'erpower them, and compel to learn The vocal science; nor could aught avail Of eloquence or wisdom; nor with ease To pour his noisy jargon o'er their ears.f In opposition to this theory, therefore, Epicurus and his disciples contended, as I have just observed, that speech or articulate language is nothing more than a natural improvement upon the natural language of man, produced by its general use, and that general experience which gives improvement to every thing. And such still continues to be the popular theory of all those philo sophers of the present day who confine themselves to the mere facts and phenomena of nature, and allow no other authority to control the chain of their argument. Such, more especially, is the theory of Buffon, Linnæus, and Lord Monboddo; who, overstepping the limits of the Epicurean field of rea *See on this subject Harris's Hermes, book iii. p. 314. 327; and Beattie on the Theory of Janguage, p 246, Lond. 1803, 4to. †Proinde, putare aliquem tum nomina distribuisse Utilitas etiam, unde data est huic prima potestas, De Rer. Nat, v. 1040. |