Punctuation Personified (1824)

From the 1824 edition of the book that sold "20 million copies" (!) in the 19th century:

"That some inferior animal be able to mimic human articulation, will not seem wonderful, when we reflect, that even by machines certain words have been expressed in this manner. But that the parrot should annex thought to words he utters, is scarcely more credible, than that a machine should do so."

http://darwin-online.org.uk/converted/pdf/1824-27_Murray_A81...

I was interested to see that this was published in London. A few things seemed to be more, what I would have called, American rather than British English. Examples would be calling a full stop a period, and the use of the serial comma in a list.

I suppose it’s just an example of how language evolves.

It feels like discovering the cute achievements of another species, except that it was us. Makes me wonder if the species we are now is an “evolved” version of our ancestors.