204 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



As this child was educated solely by working on his good feelings, he 

 soon became as truthful, open and tender as any one could desire. 



Unconsciousness, Shyness. — No one can have attended to very 

 young children without being struck at the unabashed manner in which 

 they fixedly stare without blinking their eyes at a new face; an old per- 

 son can look in this manner only at an animal or inanimate object. 

 This, I believe, is the result of young children not thinking in the least 

 about themselves, and therefore not being in the least shy, though they 

 are sometimes afraid of strangers. I saw the first symptom of shyness 

 in my child when nearly two years and three months old; this was 

 shown towards myself, after an absence of ten days from home, chiefly 

 by his eyes being kept slightly averted from mine; but he soon came 

 and sat on my knee and kissed me, and all trace of shyness disappeared. 



Means of Communication. — The noise of crying or rather of 

 squalling, as no tears are shed for a long time, is of course uttered in an 

 instinctive manner, but serves to show that there is suffering. After 

 a time the sound differs according to the cause, such as hunger or 

 pain. This was noticed when this infant was eleven weeks old, and I 

 believe at an earlier age in another infant. Moreover, he appeared 

 soon to learn to begin crying voluntarily, or to wrinkle his face in the 

 manner proper to the occasion, so as to show that he wanted some- 

 thing. When 46 days old, he first made little noises without 

 any meaning to please himself, and these soon became varied. An 

 incipient laugh was observed on the 113th day, but much earlier in 

 another infant. At this date I thought, as already remarked, that he 

 began to try to imitate sounds, as he certainly did at a considerably 

 later period. When five and a half months old, he uttered an articu- 

 late sound "da," but without any meaning attached to it. When a 

 little over a year old, he used gestures to explain his wishes; to give a 

 simple instance, he picked up a bit of paper, and, giving it to me, 

 pointed to the fire, as he had often seen and liked to see paper burnt. 

 At exactly the age of a year, he made the great step of inventing a word 

 for food, namely, mum, but what led him to it I did not discover. 

 And now, instead of beginning to cry when he was hungry, he used this 

 word in a demonstrative manner or as a verb, implying "Give me food." 

 This word, therefore, corresponds with ham, as used by M. Taine's 

 infant at the later age of fourteen months. But he also used mum 

 as a substantive of wide signification; thus he called sugar shu-mum, 

 and a little later after he had learned the word 'black,' he called 

 liquorice Hack- shu-mum — black-sugar-food. 



I was particularly struck with the fact that when asking for food 

 by the word mum he gave to it (I will copy the words written down 

 at the time), "a most strongly marked interrogatory sound at the end." 

 He also gave to "Ah," which he chiefly used at first when recognizing 



