The Speech of Monkeys

I do not think that their language is capable of shaping sentences into narrative or giving any detail in a complaint, for I have never seen anything yet among them which would justify one in ascribing to them so high a type of speech; but in terms of general grievance it may have conveyed to Puck the idea of a monkey in distress, and hence his desire to avoid it; while the image in the glass presented to him a picture of his own mood, and he therefore had no cause to shun it. I do think, however, that the present form of speech used by monkeys is developed far above a mere series of grunts and groans, and that some species among them have a much more copious and expressive form of speech than others. From many experiments with the phonograph, I am prepared to say with certainty that some have much higher phonetic types than others. I have traced some slight inflections which I think beyond a doubt modify the values of their sounds. I find that some monkeys do not make some of these inflections at all, although the phonation of a species is generally uniform in other respects. In some cases it seems to me that the inflections differ slightly in the same species, but long and constant association seems to unify these dialects in some degree, very much the same as like causes blend and unify the dialects of human speech. I have found one instance in which a Capuchin had acquired two sounds which strictly belonged to the tongue of the white-faced Cebus. I was surprised when I heard him utter the sounds, and thought at first that they were common to the speech of both varieties; but on inquiry I found that he had been confined in a cage with the white-face for nearly four years, and hence my belief that he acquired them during that time.