In conclusion, I would say that since the sounds uttered by monkeys perform all that speech performs, is made of the same material, produced by the same means, acts to the same ends, and through the same media, it is as near an approach to speech as the mental operations by which it is produced are an approach to thought. If it can be shown that these mental feats are not thought, the same process of reasoning could show that these sounds are not speech. If man derived his other faculties from such an ancestry, may not his speech have been acquired from such a source? If the prototype of man has survived through all the vicissitudes of time, may not his speech likewise have survived? If the races of mankind are the progeny of the Simian stock, may not their languages be the progeny of the Simian tongue? CHAPTER XXII. The Phonograph as an aid to Science--Vowels the basis of Phonation--Consonants developed from a Vowel basis--Vowels are Compound--The Analysis of Vowels by the Phonograph--Current Theories of Sound--Augmentation of Sounds--Sound Waves and Sound Units--Consonants among the Lower Races. The application of the phonograph to my special work is really the discovery of a new field of usefulness for that wonderful instrument, which, up to this time, has held the place of a toy more than that of a scientific apparatus of the very highest importance in the study of acoustics and philology. In many ways the use of this machine is so hampered by the avarice of men as to lessen its value as an aid to scientific research, and the Letters Patent under which it is protected preclude all competition and prevent improvements. However, I have been able, even with the poor machines in general use, to discover some of the most important facts upon which are based the laws of phonation. I shall here attempt to give in detail but a few of these experiments, as they are yet crude, and in some cases the deductions therefrom not positively certain. [Sidenote: VOICES OF MEN AND MONKEYS] From the various records that I have made of the voices of men and monkeys, I am prepared to say that the difference is not so great as is commonly supposed, and that I have converted each one into the other. I would not be understood to say that I have done this with all their sounds, nor that the monkey's sounds were converted into human speech, but the fundamental sounds of each were changed into those of the other. I find that human laughter coincides in nearly every point with that of monkeys. They differ in volume and pitch. By the aid of the phonograph I have been able to analyse the vowel sounds of human speech, which I find to be compound, and some of them contain as many as three distinct syllables of unlike sounds. From the vowel basis I have succeeded in developing certain consonant elements, both initial and final, from which I have deduced the belief that the most complex sounds of