Oxford University Press London Edinburgh Glasgow Copenhagen New York Toronto Melbourne Cape Town Bombay Calcutta Madras Shanghai IIumphrey Milford Publisher to the UNIVERSITY Printed in England 2277-4 INTRODUCTION SOME twenty years ago an enterprising scientist spent some time in an African forest, securely housed in a cage and furnished with instruments to record the sounds uttered by such animals as might grow used enough to the intruder to forget their suspicion and to recommence their normal activities. These records were afterwards reproduced by a gramophone in a zoological garden in Europe where monkeys were confined, and the captives responded to the sounds made, now with gusts of merriment and now with cries of panic, making it clear that the simian language of the jungle was intelligible in other circles than that in which it was actually uttered. A dog, however, habitually domiciled in Lancashire and taken for a holiday to Devonshire, will for some little time be set upon by the Devon dogs. This may be because the air and water of each county imparts to its animal life a distinctive smell; or it may be that the language of the domestic dog-which is known to have many more expressions than that of a prairie dog-is differentiated by geographical peculiarities. Be the case as it may with the other animals, men's language at any rate is, as we all know, in spite of conquest and courtship, of trade and travel, not everywhere uniform. When Huckleberry Finn explained to the negro who shared his travels that a Frenchman did not make the same sounds as the two companions did to indicate bread and other common things, the negro |