Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 32.djvu/410

396 is due exceptionally to uvular relaxation, and it is more frequently a bad habit which it is difficult for the possessor to recognize or to correct. Nasal intonation also has unfortunately grown to be an emotional modulation among Americans who unwittingly employ it in moments of embarrassment or indecision, and also when expressing religious emotion and various other feelings. Fortunately Americans are relatively free from the various kinds of stammering and affected hesitancy of speech so often heard in England.

The practical conclusions to be drawn from all of the above facts are briefly as follows:

1. That in keeping with the logic of past events in other languages American English, in a new physical and moral environment, has undergone a radical modification of vocal type.

2. That Americans can not be expected to conform to British customs so far as mere emphasis, inflections, and timbre of voice are concerned.

3. There are cogent reasons for efforts to keep the fundamental sounds of the language alike in the two countries, and it is the duty of all educated persons to correct such provincial or unauthorized utterances of the vowel-sounds as have been here described, and to strive to preserve the purity of the mother-tongue. If this article shall serve to awaken an interest in this important subject, or to aid any in its study its object will have been fulfilled.



HERE are eight species of apes in Dutch Guiana. The most conspicuous of them is the howling ape (Mycetes seniculus), which is also one of the best-known and largest of the race. It is called a baboon in the colony alouatte by the Caribs, and itoli by the Arowaks. When standing up it is about three feet high, and weighs about twenty pounds. It lives in both the coast-regions and the interior, and eats fruits, leaves, and buds. Its big, scantily-haired belly, the thick, tawny skin of its back, passing into a purple-brown at the back of the head and the feet; its black face, with its strong set of teeth, and the prominence under its neck, covered with a long yellow beard, altogether make it one of the ugliest apes of tropical America. It lives in small troops of rarely more than twelve individuals, among which is always to be found an old, full-grown male, which takes a higher place on the tree than the others, and leads the lugubrious concert by which these apes are so broadly distinguished from other species. The windpipe of the male is much stronger and more complicated than that of any of the other apes, and is connected with a vocal apparatus 