_Sir Telegraph Paxarett._ Your learned mythologist appears to be non compos. _Mr. Forester._ By no means. He has a system of his own, which only appears in the present day more absurd than other systems, because it has fewer followers. The manner in which the spirit of system twists everything to its own views is truly wonderful. I believe that in every nation of the earth the system which has most followers will be found the most absurd in the eye of an enlightened philosophy. _Sir Telegraph Paxarett._ But if your Oran be a man, how is it that his long intercourse with other varieties of the human species has not taught him to speak? _Mr. Forester._ Speech is a highly artificial faculty. Civilised man is a highly artificial animal. The change from the wild to the civilised state affects not only his moral, but his physical nature, and this not rapidly and instantly, but in a long process of generations. The same change is obvious in domestic animals, and in cultivated plants. You know not where to look for the origin of the common dog, or the common fowl. The wild and tame hog, and the wild and tame cat, are marked by more essential differences than the oran and the civilised man. The origin of corn is as much a mystery to us as the source of the Nile was to the ancients. Innumerable flowers have been so changed from their original simplicity, that the art of horticulture may almost lay claim to the magic of a new creation. Is it then wonderful that the civilised man should have acquired some physical faculties which the natural man has not? It is demonstrable that speech is one. I do not, however, despair of seeing him make some progress in this art. Comparative anatomy shows that he has all the organs of articulation. Indeed he has, in every essential particular, the human form, and the human anatomy. _Now I will only observe that if an animal who walks upright—is of the human form, both outside and inside—uses a weapon for defence and attack—associates with his kind—makes huts to defend himself from the weather, better I believe than those of the New Hollanders—is tame and gentle—and instead of killing men and women, as he could easily do, takes them prisoners and makes servants of them—who has, what I think essential to the human kind, a sense of honour_; which is shown by breaking his heart, if laughed at, or made a show, or treated with any kind of contumely—_who, when he is brought into the company of civilised men, behaves_ (as you have seen) _with dignity and composure, altogether unlike a monkey; from whom he differs likewise in this material respect, that he is capable of great attachment to particular persons, of which the monkey is altogether incapable; and also in this respect, that a monkey never can be so tamed that we may depend on his not doing mischief when left alone, by breaking glasses or china within his reach; whereas the oran outang is altogether harmless;—who has so much of the