the Annamitic, and likewise in the Siamese and
Burmese languages, one single sound does duty
in this way for a great variety of meanings.
"Thus," he says, "in Annamitic,  'ba'
pronounced with the grave accent, means a lady
or an ancestor; pronounced with a sharp
accent, it means the favourite of a prince;
pronounced with the semi-grave accent, it means
what has been thrown away; pronounced with
the grave circumflex, it means what is left of a
fruit after the juice has been squeezed out;
pronounced with no accent, it means three;
pronounced with the ascending or interrogative
accent, it means a box on the ear. Thus,

Ba, Bà, Bâ, Bá

is said to mean, if properly pronounced, 'Three
ladies gave a box on the ear to the favourite of
the prince.' "

In our own and in several European
languages identical sounds have various meanings;
the English "box " being one example,
and the French "sang," "s'en," "sans,"
"sent," "cent " another. If we consider this
subject without a prejudice, may we not see
reason to think that the "Bow! wow! wow!"
of our estimable friend, the dog, may be
susceptible of a great variety of meanings, according
to the tone and accentuation he gives to
those fundamental words or syllables of his
language, or the number of repetitions either
of the "bow" or the "wow"? Sometimes, when a
dog barks, he will omit the "bow" altogether,
and say, "wow! wow! wow!" very sharply and
rapidly; and it can be scarcely supposed that
so very intelligent a creature has no reason for
this little change in its customary phraseology.
Max Müller positively states that "no animal
thinks, and no animal speaks, except man."
Every one who has made a friend of an animal
—and there are few who have not—must
dispute the first part of this assertion. When a
dog is presented with a bone after he has had
his dinner and satisfied his hunger, he thinks
the bone is too good to be rejected, and
that it would be wise in him to put it into
a place of safety, to be ready when required,
just as a man puts his money in the bank.
Accordingly, he takes his opportunity to go
into the garden and bury it; and, if watched
in the process, will dig it up again with his
nose, and carry it off to a safer spot. Is not
this thinking? When I put on my hat and
overcoat, and take my walking-stick from its
accustomed place in the hall, my dog thinks,
and speedily knows, that I am going out; and
very plainly asks me, not only by the sudden
sparkling of his expressive eyes and the wagging
of his equally expressive tail, but by a succession
of joyous barks and yelps, whether I mean to
take him along with me; and, if I refuse the
request, very plainly expresses his sorrow for
my decision.

Mr. Max Müller says elsewhere in his
lecture, that "language and thought are inseparable."
If this statement be correct, it follows,
from his own showing, that if we can prove the
possession of a faculty for thinking in the
members of the inferior creation, we must admit
that they may possess a language which they may
thoroughly understand, and which may be quite
sufficient for the expression of their limited
ideas. It is difficult to believe that the crow
has not two or three, and the nightingale at
least a dozen notes in its voice, and that these
notes may not, in their interchange, reiteration,
and succession, express ideas with which crows
are familiar, and whole poems or histories, such
as nightingales love to tell and repeat to one
another; and that any one of the many notes
in the sweet song of the skylark may not,
according to its accentuation, or even to its
place in the gamut, express as many shades of
meaning as the Annamitic "BA" of which Mr.
Max Müller discourses. That we cannot
understand the language is no proof that it is not
a language; for, if it were, the nations of the
earth might mutually accuse each other of being
as speechless as the brutes. It is quite as difficult
for the uneducated and untrained ear—say,
of an Englishman—to distinguish the several
sounds uttered by a Frenchman, a Russian, a
Spaniard, or a Gaelic Highlander, speaking
rapidly, as it is to distinguish from one another
the separate sounds in the song of the lark or
the nightingale, or the twitter of sparrows.
In Scotland the cuckoo is called the gowk, as
it used to be formerly called in England; and the
saying remains in the northern parts of the island
that a very silly person is "as stupid as a
gowk." "A gowk" means a fool, or a person
that is always saying the same thing, and has
but one idea—like a cuckoo. But no one thinks
of applying such an epithet of scorn to a real
singing-bird, that has many notes in its voice,
and consequently expresses a larger number of
ideas. Every one knows the paucity of mere
sounds in a musical octave—the seven notes of
the gamut, with their flats and sharps; but out
of these seven come all the national melodies,
all the glees and madrigals, all the popular
tunes, all the dances and galops, all the reels
and strathspeys, all the hymns and songs, all
the oratorios, all the grand and little operas,
that ever have been or ever will be composed;
so that, if we grant even so few as seven notes to
the lark or the nightingale, we grant it a language,
or, at all events, the possibility of a language
or a vocabulary, quite as rich as that of Hodge,
the farm-labourer, with his five or six hundred
words, or that of the little child, that has scarcely
half the number.

These remarks, speculations, or arguments,
whichever the reader may consider them to be,
apply only to those sounds at the command of
the inferior creation which may, for all we
know to the contrary, serve as the constituent
syllables of the words which make their language,
and not to those other languages of the eye, or
the gesture, which human beings with articulate
speech at their disposal so constantly
employ. The eyes of man or woman, as everybody
knows and has felt, can express love, or hate, or
tear, or anger, without the necessity of speech;