The Speech of Monkeys

It is my purpose, on my return from Africa, to set on foot a series of such experiments, with the hope of ascertaining the facts connected therewith. And while in Africa I shall aim to make such records of the natives as to ascertain whether their speech conforms to the same laws of development or not. It is my earnest hope to be able to do the same thing with the great apes which I am going chiefly to study. I think if I can record on a phonograph cylinder the sounds uttered by a young chimpanzee under certain conditions once each day for a year or so, I can determine whether there is a like growth in their speech, and to what extent the same laws control it. I have already observed that the quality of voice in a given species of monkey changes with his age very much in the same manner as the human voice; but I have not been able to follow the changes through one individual specimen by which to ascertain the exact manner of such change. [Sidenote: SOUNDS OF BIRDS]