n he would approach
the mirror, then listen to the sounds which came from the horn, and it
appeared from his conduct that there was a conflict somewhere. It was
evident that he did not believe that the monkey which he saw in the
glass was making the sounds which came from the horn. He repeatedly put
his mouth to the glass, and caressed the image which he saw there, and
at the same time showed a grave suspicion and some concern about the one
which he heard in the horn, and tried to keep away from it as much as
possible. His conduct in this case was a source of surprise to me, as
the sounds contained in the record which I had repeated to him were all
uttered in a mood of anxious, earnest entreaty, which to me seemed to
contain no sound of anger, warning, or alarm, but which, on the
contrary, I had interpreted as a kind of love speech, full of music and
tenderness. I had not learned the exact meaning of any one of the sounds
contained in this cylinder, but had ascribed in a collective and general
way such a meaning to this speech. But from Puck's conduct I was led to
believe that it was a general complaint of some kind against those
monkeys in that other cage who had made life a burden to little Pedro.
One thing was clear to my mind, and that is that Puck interpreted the
actions of the monkey which he saw in the glass to mean one thing, and
the sounds which he heard from the horn to mean quite another.

[Sidenote: FORM OF SPEECH USED BY 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
th