Tafel.] 288 [October. 



Castile, whoso brother had lost his sense of hearing, when he was 

 two years old, and hence was deaf and dumb. This circumstance 

 induced him to prosecute those studies, the fruits of which he be- 

 queathed to us in his work." .... 



^' Independently of the discoveries of the Spaniards, physiological 

 phonology and its practical application to the instruction of the deaf 

 and dumb was established by the celebrated John Wallls^^ who pre- 

 fixed to his English grammar, first printed in 1653, a ' Tractatus 

 (jrammaticopliyskus de loquela,^ and in the years 1660 and 1661 

 instructed two deaf and dumb pupils. His success was no less re- 

 markable than that of Ponce, and in a letter to Amman, a Swiss 

 living in Holland, who about thirty years later discovered indepen- 

 dently the mode of instructing the deaf and dumb, he states that he 

 proceeded so far as to enable one of his pupils to pronounce the most 

 difficult Polish words, enunciated for him by a Polish nobleman, so 

 that the latter was astonished at his proficiency. As Wallis was a 

 very learned man, in elaborating his system of phonology he was en- 

 abled not only to take into consideration the English, but also the 

 Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, Persian, German, French, Cymric, 

 and Gaelic languages." .... 



" The greatest progress in phonology was made towards the close 

 of the eighteenth century in Germany, at Vienna, where Wol/(/an(/ 

 von Kempelen, in constructing his speaking-machine, was not only 

 led to investigate the manner in which man produces the sounds of 

 language, but also to examine the conditions under which they can 

 be pronounced at all. In these endeavors he was more successful with 

 regard to the consonants than the vowels, of which Robert Willis 

 (1828) first gave us a satisfactory account. However, the formation 

 of the vowels still presents to us considerable theoretical difficulties, 

 which it ivill take a lony time perliaps to solve in a satisfactory 

 manner. With respect to all the rest we may say that Kempelen 

 has left us a system of physiological phonology, which was improved 

 and completed, it is true, in after-times, but which was so firmly es- 

 tablished by him, that it furnishes the surest foundation for all sub- 

 sequent investigations." 



* Dr. Briicke calls hiiu erroneously a ''bishop.'" IIo was no bishop, but pro- 

 fessor of geometry at Oxford, and afterwards one of the royal chaplains ; he was 

 also one of the earliest members of the Royal Society. Dr. Briicke evidently 

 confounds him with Bishop John Wilkins, who lived at the same time, and ren- 

 dered himself famous by his "Essay towards a real Character and Philosophical 

 Language." 



