ANIMAL LANGUAGE.
MR. GARNER'S latest book,* giving the results of his. visit to the West African forest to study the habits, and, if possible, to learn the language, of the larger apes, is interest-. ing, but disappointing. There evidently is no "common code" for a universal ape language, and a very careful study of the- creatures which he kept in captivity in their native country shows that such sounds as the different species utter are very limited in number, and do not express more ideas than other and better-known animals convey to each other by the- voice. The chimpanzee, for instance, has distinct sounds• for the ideas of food, recognition, fear, affection, warning, and discomfort, and two gestures of negation, a movement of the arm away from the body, and towards the person ad- dressed, and that of turning its back and moving the arab backwards. Other apes have an even more limited vocabulary,. and though their intelligence is of a very high order, their means of communication, except perhaps by gesture, are not greater than those of many other quadrupeds, notably the cat, and less than those of certain birds. Touch, especially in the case of insects, and the highly developed power of scent, appealing to the senses by channels unknown to. man, and interpreted by a process of thought with which we are only partly acquainted, convey ideas by other means than speech, and supplement the want of language.. The silence of most quadrupeds is accounted for by the limited number of wants encountered in their daily life, and the constant recurrence of these wants in the- same order. Many of their ideas need no expressing. They simply act on them at once or after a little re- flection, and their companions follow snit. Brain-power has no necessary result in efforts at oral communica- tion. The elephant exerts all its persuasion on another elephant by touches with the trunk without uttering a. sound, while the howling monkeys, not the most intelli- gent of their race, are the most vociferous. Tigers and cats express themselves by the voice far more distinctly than the chimpanzee. A cub now at the Zoo purrs to show, pleasure, mews in recognition of its keeper, and titters another and different sound at the sight of food, and possesses a vocabulary of modulated howls and groans quite as expressive as the " calls " of a cat ; while the fox,. one of the cleverest of our wild animals, is almost mute, though the fox which twice travelled back from Sussex to its home in Northumberland must, unless we are to suppose the existence of another sense, have had some means of asking the way from other foxes which it met on its journey.
Birds are in general as talkative as quadrupeds are silent.. They are not only vocal, enjoying the sound of their own voices, and often listening with delight to the song of
• Gorillas and Chimpanzees. By B.. L. Garner. London : 0Egool, McDraines. their mates, but they talk in the proper sense of the word. They prefer to use their voices as a means of communi-
cating their wishes or ideas. They are able to modu- late their voices better than most quadrupeds, though this rule has many exceptions. But this does not ex- plain their preference for " talking " in place of signal- ling or the use of touch. It is a racial instinct, quite
as characteristic of the order ayes as the possession of feathers or the power of flight. Two features in the
"talking" of birds will occur to every one. There is no ." universal bird-language," or even a language common to two species, though certain sounds of warning, when
uttered by one species, are naturally understood by another. .Secondly, the talking faculty is very capriciously distri- buted. The crows, which easily learn to imitate human speech, have very few notes or calls. The jay has only one, a harsh screech, modified when it is pleased into a croak ; and a chuckle, varied by a squeak, is the whole natural vocabulary of the magpie. Yet the piping-crow and the nutcracker-crow are songsters of a rather high
order, and the former has an infinite variety of " words " and .calls. The absence of any universal bird-speech is seen most -clearly by any one who observes their habits in places where such a common language would naturally be expected. On the shores of some estuaries, or of the North Norfolk coast, it
is possible to see from a thousand to perhaps three thousand birds, closely united in race, and living all day in sight of one another, associating in flocks, with common feeding-grounds and common dangers,—a " community "of plovers, knots, ring dotterels, stints, curlews, sandpipers, and other kindred species. Their interchange of ideas by means of the voice is very limited, and a common code might easily be learnt. They require a call-note of inquiry—" Where are you ? " —another for answer, sometimes the same note—" Here I am "—an alarm-note, and a note uttered when flying or rising from the ground, which may be interpreted as a ,sound of mutual eneonragem ent or pleasure. Not a trace of a " common code" appears. Each kind has its own call, its own answer, and its own " fighting " note. Their many and various musical whistles make one of the charms of the winter shore; but they show the curious sectionalism of bird language. The ease with which they might adopt a common tongue is evident from the fact that many coast-men learn some, and a few of great natural ability as fowlers learn on, of these calls. As in Heligoland, where the islanders -" whistle down" passing birds from the sky, so on the Norfolk coast there are men who can "call down" a single golden plover, a stint, or even a curlew. One of the most extraordinary instances ever known, both of the man's skill and of the bird's intense and unsuspecting reliance on lan- guage, occurred not long ago on the Norfolk coast, where a noted "caller" brought a golden plover down from a great height in the sky, and kept it running about within a few yards of a party lunching in the sand-hills. It is remarked also that the peewit, which has the largest range of notes of all shore-birds, and therefore is presumably the cleverest at dis- tinguishing the meaning and differences of the peewit lan- guage, is also the most difficult to "call."
Most, if not all, of the songs of birds are meant as music, to appeal to the emotions, and not as a means of communica- tion. Their " talk " is separate from their song. None of the game-birds or of the gallinaceous birds, wild and tame, have a song; but the greater number communicate with each other vocally. Among fowls the sound meaning " Here is something nice to eat" is used by both sexes ; and these are the only birds which have a distinct and universally recognised call with this meaning. Charles Kingsley, only half in earnest, ascribes a similar call to the hen- grouse ; but pheasants have only one note when calling their young, which is used indifferently on all occasions. Partridges " cluck " to call their chicks as a hen does, but lack the "food" word. Chickens also have a distinct and peculiar call which means "a hawk." Hawks are now so scarce near hen-roosts that they might well have forgotten its use and meaning, but they have not. The owner of a model farm, who had noticed the use of this call when a boy in a county where these visits from hawks were not uncommon, and who was a good mimic of bird-sounds, tried the effect of uttering it when some fifty or sixty fowls were feeding in a meadow connected with their hen-house by a tunnel running
under a fence. At the first call they all looked up, and at the second, though they saw no hawk, they ran to the tunnel and crowded through it into the hen-house. Most of the combined movements of the grey partridge, when no enemy is near, are agreed on by means of conversation. They "call" to each other when disposed to take a flight, and have a separate note to indicate that they have taken wing, a word well understood by any of the covey which have not joined the rest, and by other coveys near. When the brood is settling down to sleep the old birds "clack " to gather the brood, even when they are fall-grown.
In the sustained flight of birds in flocks the use of the voice is discarded, and " flight evolutions " are made by signal. This is analogous to the use of signals to govern the move- ments of ships in fleets. It is not only more convenient, but more effective than a vocal order. The signal is given by the leading bird, and by the nature of the case is limited to change of direction. Many of the instantaneous changes in the flight of birds in flocks are probably due to the effect of changes in the direction of the wind, to which each member of the flock spontaneously adjusts its flight. But the need for communication by signal is clearly recognised in the case of some species. Wild geese, for example, when merely flying to and from their feeding-ground, or "changing pastures," fly almost in line abreast. But when migrating, or taking long flights inland, they fall into the wedge formation, with a leader to give the signals. Their vocabulary of satisfaction, " society," and pleasure is apparently very wide ; the fowlers always speak of geese as " talking " on the sands at night. The tame swan, on the other hand, is so silent that its specific name is the " mute swan." Its communications with its mate are wholly those of sight; but those who are familiar with swan-haunted rivers will note that at night the mute swan is no longer mute. It has at least two calls ; one apparently to ascertain the position of the other bird, and the other a note uttered when it is flying. Yet the mute swan is by no means the least successful of animals in the straggle for existence. It has survived and emancipated itself from domestication, and lives its natural life, is most successful in rearing its young, and maintains itself, not as a dependent upon man, but as a wild bird which has won its freedom, but prefers the company of its masters.
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