The lower orders of people in Italy have always been famous for quickness in making and reading signals, and a Neapolitan is often as expert as an Indian of the plains in the language of signals; in fact, he is smarter, for he will even talk by means of it to one of his kind while a stranger remains unconscious that they are communicating with each other before his face. Some writers have argued that our letters must have been developed from signs once drawn roughly to indicate gestures made by the human limbs. An ingenious person has proposed an entirely new alphabet, which he considers much quicker and more sensible than our own. It is based on gestures natural to mankind and reduced from those which he considers the most important. But into this and into the endless varieties of short-hand writings and abbreviated writings proposed by inventors in what is called stenography, tachygraphy, and other strange-looking words selected from the Greek dictionary, we can not enter. By sounds, too, ideas are conveyed between animals and between men. As used by mankind, we call the sounds speech; owing to the gulf that man in his pride wishes to set between himself and beasts, we call the sounds made by animals anything rather than speech. When your dog wags its tail, it uses a sort of gesture language. But when it barks, does it not speak? If you ever saw the great actor Salvini play “Othello,” you will remember that he uses cries, like those of animals, to express rage, grief, or remorse, which are too great to find the measured relief of words. Birds sing their happiness and cry their distress. Between the disconsolate mewing of the cat-bird and its rich song of gladness at sunset, while the mother is safe on the nest, the difference is astonishing; so is the difference between the mellow song of the brown thrush and its squirrel-like bark at the certainty of danger, or its vicious clucking and hissing when its nest is found and touched. Jays have a discordant cry, but also a charming bell-like call note, which sounds rarely in the deep pine forests. Even fish sometimes make voluntary sounds, while the cries of our frogs and toads and insects, which make the wilderness joyous, at times are deafening. Animals, as a rule, have some kind of speech, however rude, however occasional may be its use.