Bisbee daily review., 1908-11-24

from that which has furnished inspir-
 ation to Mir. R. L. Garner, who pene- trated the jungle of the Gaboon in
 Africa with an aluminium cage and a
 phonograph-the former being for oc-
 cupancy by himself while engaged in
 his studies, and the latter for record
 ing the speech of any gorillas or other
 friendly simian creatures that might happen his way.
 MT. Garner has sought only to study the language of wild monkeys. Prof. Bells idea is to take young monkeys, captured in infancy, and teach them how to talk.
 The weakness of MT. Gamers meth cd lies in the fact that no wild animal has much to say for itself Take the parrot, for example. In 8 state of nature this most conversational of birds seems to be not even initiative Though the tropical forests which fl inhabits are vocal from sunrise to sun set, it mimics nothing, 1t sole notes be ing a harsh croaking and screaming The mere fact that wild monkeys do not say much is no proof that they are not capable of learning to talk if cap tured in babyhood and properly trained. A monkey has exactly the same throat and mouth structures az a human being. Its vocal apparatus is the same as ours. Why, then, should 1t not be able to learn Tow to speak7
 A question of intelligence? Well, the parrot, which is vastly less intelli- gent animal than the monkey, is able to talk. So why not our arboreal cousin? If the parrot Is by nature initiative, the monkey is even more so.
 In a state of nature monkeys do un- doubtedly say things. That is to say. like other animals, they utter a few vocal sounds which express various wants and emotions. But they pos sess nothing which can properly be hkened to the articulate speech of hu- man beings. MT. Garner has tried to prove otherwise, but not wi;h success.
 Prof. Bell is not trying to study monkey language. He wishes to teach monkeys to utter human speech-pref- erably in the English tongue His mo- ton that this is practicable Is based, first, upon the fact that a monkey pos sesses perfectly efficient organs of speech, the only difficulty being to make him use them; second, that our simian congener Is by far the most 1n- telligent of all the lower animals, and, third. that he is extremely initiative.
 The professor was led into this in- vestigation in very curious way His wife, a daughter of the late Gardiner Hubbard of Washingon, D. C., was born entirely deaf. This meant, of course. that she could not speak. He became her teacher while she was still a young girl, and, by the adoption of original methods of his own, taught her to speak, afterward marrying her.
 If such a thing could be accom- pnshed, why, thought Prof Bell, might It not be possible to teach monkeys to talk? It is true that the simian in- telligence is enormously inferior to that of a human being; but, on the otheT hand, the monkey is able to hear. Nobody ever heard of a deaf and dumb monkey. One advantage might offset, to a great extent, the other disadvantage.
 Prof. Bell has been carrying on these experiments for some time past, but has not yet seen fit to make public any of the results obtained. In any case they are sure to be extremely fn- That it should be practic- able to teach a monkey to converse ra- donally is, of course. out of the ques- ton But there would seem to be no why the animal should not in- dicate its wants, emotions or mere primary concepts of almost any sort by the utteranee of English words, a few dozen of which might comprise its total vocabulary.