Note 14 — Chapter VI · SIR ORAN HAUT-TON

‘He has the capacity of being a musician, and has actually learned to play upon the pipe and harp: a fact attested, not by a common traveller, but by a man of science, Mr. Peiresc, and who relates it, not as a hearsay, but as a fact consisting with his own knowledge. And this is the more to be attended to, as it shows that the oran outang has a perception of numbers, measure, and melody, which has always been accounted peculiar to our species. But the learning to speak, as well as the learning music, must depend upon particular circumstances; and men living as the oran outangs do, upon the natural fruits of the earth, with few or no arts, are not in a situation that is proper for the invention of language. The oran outangs who played upon the pipe had certainly not invented this art in the woods, but they had learned it from the negroes or the Europeans; and that they had not at the same time learned to speak, may be accounted for in one or other of two ways: either the same pains had not been taken to teach them articulation; or, secondly, music is more natural to man, and more easily acquired than speech.’—Origin and Progress of Language, book ii. chap. 5.