Year by year, as new ideas were revealed to me, new barriers arose, and I began to realise how great a task was mine. One difficulty was to utter the sounds I heard, another was to recall them, and yet another to translate them. But impelled by an inordinate hope and not discouraged by poor success, I continued my studies, as best I could, in the Gardens of New York, Philadelphia, Cincinnati and Chicago, and with such specimens as I could find from time to time with travelling shows, hand-organs, aboard some ship, or kept as a family pet. I must acknowledge my debt of gratitude to all these little creatures who have aided me in the study of their native tongue. [Sidenote: ACTING AS INTERPRETER] Having contended for some years with the difficulties mentioned, a new idea dawned upon me, and, after maturely considering it, I felt assured of ultimate success. I went to Washington, and proposed the novel experiment of acting as interpreter between two monkeys. Of course this first evoked from the great fathers of science a smile of incredulity; but when I explained the means by which I expected to accomplish this, a shadow of seriousness came over the faces of those dignitaries to whom I first proposed the novel feat. I procured a phonograph upon which to record the sounds of the monkeys. I separated two monkeys which had occupied the same cage together for some time, and placed them in separate rooms of the building where they could not see or hear each other. I then arranged the phonograph near the cage of the female, and by various means induced her to utter a few sounds, which were recorded on the cylinder of the phonograph. The machine was then placed near the cage containing the male, and the record repeated to him and his conduct closely studied. He gave evident signs of recognising the sounds, and at once began a search for the mysterious monkey doing the talking. His perplexity at this strange affair cannot well be described. The familiar voice of his mate would induce him to approach, but that squeaking, chattering horn was a feature which he could not comprehend. He traced the sounds, however, to the horn from which they came, and, failing to find his mate, thrust his arm into the horn quite up to his shoulder, then withdrew it, and peeped into it again and again. The expressions of his face were indeed a study. I then secured a few sounds of his voice and delivered them to the female, who showed some signs of interest, but the record was very imperfect and her manner seemed quite indifferent. In this experiment, for the first time in the history of language, was the Simian speech reduced to record; and while the results were not fully up to my hopes, they served to inspire me to further efforts to find the fountain-head from which flows out the great river of human speech. Having satisfied myself that each one recognised the sound made by the other when delivered through the phonograph, I felt rewarded for