Now, if these definitions are correct, and you choose to accept them as being so, what becomes of the "language" of the deaf and dumb?
[XIV.]
POWER OF SPEECH IN THE FELINE.
It is not true that all animals have vocal chords. Some are marsupial, such as the kangaroo, and have membranous vocal chords, which stretch upon themselves and so cannot be stretched by the arytenoid muscles. A few of them are mammalia, such as the giraffe, the porcupine, and the armadillo, have no vocal chords, and are, therefore, mute. This is also the case with the cetacea, the loud bellowing of the whale being produced by the expulsion of water through the nostrils during the act of expiration. Serpents have no vocal chords, and their hiss is the result of breathing forcibly down through a soft glottis. Frogs have no trachea, so that their larynx opens into the bronchial tube, but the loudness of the croaking of male frogs is due to the distension of two membranous sacs at the side of the neck. Some frogs have membranous vocal chords, others two reed-like bodies, the anterior ends of which are fixed, while the posterior ends with the ventricles of the larynx and the laryngo-pharyngeal sacs looking into the bronchi are free.
The vocal organs of both man and the other animals present a general resemblance to each other, despite varying degrees of development. Cats have a sac between the thyroid cartilage and the os hyoideum, which have much to do with the modifying and increasing of the tones of the voice. The laryngeal sacs are small, and thus prevent what might be a shrill cry, such as the deafening shrieks of the monkeys of Africa. The epiglottis is comparatively small, and there are proportionately small cavities in the thyroid cartilage and the os hyoideum, which communicate with the ventricles of the larynx and the laryngeal-pharyngeal sacs, which give the peculiar softness of musical tone to the feline, as may be noted by a merely casual observer, and is accounted one of the most delightful characteristics of the Cat.
The brain of the Cat so closely resembles that of man as to force the unwilling admission from anatomists and physiologists that in form and substance they bear so close and striking a similarity that it must be conceded that they are, to all intents and purposes, the same in substance and conformation, and differ only in weight and size. It will be seen, from this admission of the greatest of physiologists and anatomists, possessed as men are of the natural prejudice against all animals, saving only man, in the way of his ascendency in every respect above all other animals, that, in the proportion of weight of brain and under similar circumstances, the intelligence of the Cat is equal to that of man. These forced admissions must necessarily carry conviction with them, so that I shall hope, at no distant day, to hear the admission of what to me is a proven fact, that in the ratio of the size of the two brains the Cat is equal in intelligence to man under the same existing circumstances.
The negro of America, brought up in ignorance and under servile conditions, a slave, classified as cattle, was once considered an inferior order of the human species by some, and by many as a biped, but a long step beneath his now regarded white brother. Time and experience developed the fact that the negro was susceptible of cultivation, and his ebony brain, contained in a skull of twice and thrice the thickness of the white man's, has been polished to a high degree, in exceptional cases, although I must admit that this polishing has been found to be in proportion to the degree of amalgamation with other races, particularly that of the white man.
Anatomists are unanimous in their opinions and their experiments show conclusively that the Cat has a much finer and more delicate organism than the dog. Upon this universal deduction I argue that they are more sensitive than the dog, a proposition which meets the approval of every naturalist, anatomist and pathologist who has ever taken the subject into consideration. In fact, it is almost universally conceded that Cats are fully as intelligent as dogs, and by many the feline is regarded as the superior animal in every respect.
Prof. William Lindsay, M.D., F.R.S., F.L.S., Hon. Member New Zealand Institute, says in his remarkable work, entitled "Mind in the Lower Animals": "The lower animals are subject to the same kinds of bodily diseases as affect men. They are subject to the same kinds of mental disorders, productible by the same causes as in man." He asserts that Cats readily comprehend and thoroughly understand man's words and the conversation of men. The following attributes he ascribes to the Cat, namely, "a moral sense in so far as it involves, a, honesty; b, sense of duty or trust; c, sense of guilt and shame; d, concealment of crime.