No animals possess a verbal language. Animals can remember some of the words used by men, and associate with them their meaning. But this is not the use of language. It is merely the memory of two associated facts,--as when the animal recollects where he found food, and goes to the same place to look for it again. Animals have different cries, indicating different wants. They use one cry to call their mate, another to terrify their prey. But this is not the use of verbal language. Human language implies not merely an acquaintance with the meaning of particular words, but the power of putting them together in a sentence. Animals have no such language as this; for, if they had, it would have been learned by men. Man has the power of learning any verbal language. Adelung and Vater reckon over three thousand languages spoken by men, and any man can learn any of them. The negroes speak their own languages in their own countries; they speak Arabic in North Africa; they learn to speak English, French, and Spanish in America, and Oriental languages when they go to the East. If any animals had a verbal language, with its vocabulary and grammar, men would long ago have learned it, and would have been able to converse with them. Again, no animal except man is capable of self-culture, as an individual. Animals are trained by external influences; they do not teach themselves. An old wolf is much more cunning than a young one, but he has been made so by the force of circumstances. You can teach your dog tricks, but no dog has ever taught himself any. Yet the lowest savages teach themselves to make tools, to ornament their paddles and clubs, and acquire certain arts by diligent effort. Birds will sometimes practice the tunes which they hear played, till they have learned them. They will also sometimes imitate each other's songs. That is, they possess the power of vocal imitation. But to imitate the sounds we hear is not self-culture. It is not developing a new power, but it is exercising in a new way a natural gift. Yet we must admit that in this habit of birds there is the rudiment, at least, of self-education.