The Hood River glacier. (Hood River, Or.) 1889-1933, 1904-03-10
LANGUAGE OF ANIMALS.
Some of the Lower Creatures Able to
Initiate Sounds.

sums OF the Lower creatures Able to
Initiate Sounds.
The cries Of animals are a species
of natural language, according to a
writer in Forest and Stream. The
older grammarians, remember, tat = :
us that crying, weeping, laughing, etc.,
were examples of natural language;
they were expressive of feeling
natural to men and were understood
by all intuitiyely. The origin of spoken
or artificial language, as it is called,
Is large subject and | do not propose
to enter upon it; but l presume that
all forms of natural language, includ-
ing the cries Of beasts and birds, are,
as the term implies, natural to them,
that Is, born with them; and the spe-
cifc cry of any species must be de-
termined by some peculiarities of the
vocal organs in that species. For eX-
ample, a crow croaks and a rooster
crows, because by the peculiar
structure of their vocal arrangements
they can utter those sounds more read
lily than any other. Yet, by training
and effort some of the lower creation
become able to initiate and reproduce
other sounds than those most natural
to them, just as the first natural out
cries of the infant give way through
culture to the myriad utterances Of
artificial language.
The bawling Of a COW and the roar
of lion are quite different sounds
and, as things stand now, the sound
uttered by one of these animals would
be quite impossible to the other; yet,
as read Darwin, either of these out
cries might in time come to be the
natural cry of the other. If the two
species of animals could be brought
to live peacefully together and to the
lion it should become apparent that the
voice of the COW would be of great
value to him, say in the matter Of
securing his food, there is no reason
to doubt that he might in the course
Of time, from effort transmitted from
generation to generation, come at
length to possess the dulcet notes of the
COW.
If the giraffe, which was originally
only large antelope, has developed his
high forequarters, his elongated neck
and his long, flexible upper lip, from
his efforts to browse on the higher
branches of the trees, and If the
founder, which when young has its
eyes on the opposite sides Of its head,
as any well-regulated fish would be ex-
pected to have, is able through long
continued effort to transfer the eye
that rests disagreeably on the sands
around to the other side Of its head,
where 1t may be of some service, there
is no telling what varieties or modifi-
cations of voice or shape may be
wrought in nature in the course Of the
ages.
But let us have no meandering. A
kitten cries out, because in common
with nearly all animals, 1t is furnished
with certain vocal apparatus, and its
cry takes the popularity Of a new,
because that sound best responds to
its special vocal apparatus. Hence,
and especially in view of the little In
cident which l have related, am led
to believe that the young Of any ami
NAL utters the same cry as its mother
and not from imitation. l think a
young rooster crows and young hen
cackles, not in imitation Of their elders,
but, like the poet who ''lisped in num-
bers," because "the numbers came"
Imagine If Robinson Crusoe had landed
on his solitary island with a good,
fresh-laid hens egg in his pocket, and
he had put it to hatch under his pet
parrot, the rooster, If such had come
FORTH would have crowed out Justify
of a summer morning, and never would
have learned to say poor Pollw in the
world