The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-09-01
CLAIMS HE GAN TALK
 WITH WILD BEASTS Scientist Learns Language
 of Lower Animals HE MASTERS FIFTEEN Claims the Dog Is Markedly Def.
 cient in the Matter of Lan- !. guage in Spite of His Intelligence
San Francisco Bulletin.

From the San Francisco Bulletin
 IT his claims are substantiated, Charles Kellogg, who has spent years in the Sierra Nevada moutains studying the habits of birds and animals, will go on record as enc of the most remarkable iinguists known to scholars. For Kellogg has done what no other man has eyer succeeded In doing-he has mastered the hidden language by which the lower animals communicate with each other Such are the claims he makes, and he is now wait ing for the verdict of a jury of Harvard professors, to whom, he says, he will sub init proof which will enable them to place the scientific stamp upon his work.
 According to MT Kellogg. he has ac- complished in reality during a lie spent in the wilds of the Sierra Nevada moua- tains in California, what the genius of kipling makes Mogwi accomplish during a childhood passed In the tropical jungle. But unlike the child of Kipllng's brain, Kellogg has far friends only the animals of the temperate American west. He knows not the language of the tropical monkey, though he has often talked bear with the grizzlies of the Sierra Nevadas. Crickets, squirrels, lizards and lattlesnakes are some of the other ani- mals whose languages Mir. Kellogg speaks fiuently.
 NO reasonable man can deny that the higher animals have means of communi- cation. l myself think it probable that all forms of life, however primitive pos- sess the faculty, though, of course, proof or the belief is not entire practicable Wherever animals associate freely they communicate with each other though animals of the same species have a more clearly perfect understanding than those of different species.
 Tt was by years of constant observing the association of sounds with actions that I mastered the 15 animal languages l am familiar with. l began on domestic chickens, and gradually extended my study to include such wild animals and reptiles as the bear, the lizard and the fattlesnake
 For those who are accustomed to think only of human languages 1o will probably seem a most extraordinary num- Der to master in a lifetime, but it must be remembered that the further down the scale of civilization one goes the less need is there for words to express ideas, for thev very simple reason that there are few e. Ideas to express. There are according
 
 In the English language. Shakespeare is said to have used 15,O00, and the estimated active vocabulary of the average lnhabit- ants of Terra del Fuego have less than 5o0, and the squalor-dulled peasants of Eastern Russia have less than 300 words to their vocabularies. 1t will be observed that the further down the scale of human development one goes the less highly developed he will find the language And the same holds true of the other animals
 Using a system of hieroglypnics mod eled upon the modern Chinesc system. have compiled dictionary of the language of the ordinary brown or hearth cricket. which has the most highly de- veloped language of any of the animals am familiar with though have reason to suspect the monkeys are superior in this respect From my dictionary I find there are 27 elementary words or sounds, and S5 other words made up of various combinations of the original 27, a cumu- lative system not unlike that of the Ger. mans. The number of words or sounds in other animal languages I am familiar with variates from P to 25
 Strangely enough the dog which we are accustomed to regard as of rather High order of intelligence, is markedly deficient in the matter of language both the grizzly bear and the rattlesnake be- ing vastly his superior. In the vocabu- lary or the ordinary watchdog there are but + sounds. I know one dog, .an ex- ceptionally intelligent collie, who regular ly used 21 sounds in ordinary conversa- tion. The additional four were inyen- tons of my own which I was able to teach him only after many months of constant labor.
 This lack of linguistic development on tEe part of dogs proceeds, I believe. not from any lack of intelligence, but rather from lack of means of expression. To far greater extent than any other animal of my acquaintance dogs depend upon their intuition, faculty which is devel- oped in them to a remarkable degree They seem almost to read each others minds without any exchange of signals whatsoever,