The Speech of Monkeys

I know a dog, now living near Leominster, Mass., that extinguished an accidental fire which had been caused by the hired man carelessly dropping a burning match in some straw in the barn-yard after lighting his lantern. The dog had to fight the fire with his paws, and by the time he had extinguished it they were much singed. His loud barking was sufficient to warn the family that something unusual was taking place. They soon responded to his call, and found that he had the fire quite under control. He had thus saved his master's barn and house from the flames, and since that time, as I have witnessed myself, will not allow any one to light a cigar with a match in his presence. The peculiar sound which he makes under such circumstances appeals to the sense of fear or apprehension, and I have observed that the significance of all speech depends much upon intonation. It is less so with man, perhaps, than with other animals, because of the great number of words which amplify and shade his meanings. But by a single word of human speech we can express many shades of meaning simply by modulation; but having at our command so many words to qualify our meaning, we lose sight of the value and power of intonation. The difficulty of discerning the delicate shades of meaning imparted by intonation, depends upon the mode of thought, and the simpler this is the keener the power to interpret inflections. One very important fact is that a dog only learns to interpret one sound on one subject at any one time. He cannot put together in his mind a great number of sounds, nor interpret complex ideas in detail. I know a dog in Charleston, South Carolina, that would fly into a rage and bark fiercely if you say, "Chad, where is that big black dog that whipped you so badly?" But repeated experiments proved to my mind that the dog did not interpret any part of the sentence except the words "black dog," and even this seemed to depend chiefly upon the sound "black," and by saying this sound you would get the same results as to use the entire sentence. He had been whipped by a dog of this description, and had been so often reminded of it that he had associated the sound with the incident.