48 MAN [Chap. VIII 



Letter 416 deserve further investigation. I will add that it formerly 

 appeared to me that the gustatory sense, at least in the case 

 of my own infants, and very young children, differed from 

 that of grown-up persons. This was shown by their not 

 disliking rhubarb mixed with a little sugar and milk, which 

 is to us abominably nauseous ; and in their strong taste for 

 the sourest and most austere fruits, such as unripe gooseberries 

 and crab apples. 



Letter 417 To G. J. Romanes. 



[Barlaston], Aug. 20th, 1878. 



Part of this letter (here omitted) is published in Life and Letters, 

 III., p. 225, and the whole in the Life and Letters of G. J. Romanes, 

 p. 74. The lecture referred to was on animal intelligence, and was given 

 at the Dublin meeting of the British Association. 



. . . The sole fault which I find with your lecture is that 

 it is too short, and this is a rare fault. It strikes me as 

 admirably clear and interesting. I meant to have remon- 

 strated that you had not discussed sufficiently the necessity 

 of signs for the formation of abstract ideas of any complexity, 

 and then I came on the discussion on deaf mutes. This 

 latter seems to me one of the richest of all the mines, and is 

 worth working carefully for years, and very deeply. I should 

 like to read whole chapters on this one head, and others on 

 the minds of the higher idiots. Nothing can be better, as it 

 seems to me, than your several lines or sources of evidence, 

 and the manner in which you have arranged the whole 

 subject. Your book will assuredly be worth years of hard 

 labour ; and stick to your subject. By the way, I was pleased 

 at your discussing the selection of varying instincts or mental 

 tendencies ; for I have often been disappointed by no one 

 having ever noticed this notion. 



I have just finished La PsycJiologie, son Present et son 

 Avenir, 1876, by Delbceuf (a mathematician and physicist of 

 Belgium) in about a hundred pages. It has interested me 

 a good deal, but why I hardly know ; it is rather like Herbert 

 Spencer. If you do not know it, and would care to see it, 

 send me a postcard. 



Thank Heaven, we return home on Thursday, and I shall 

 be able to go on with my humdrum work, and that makes 

 me forget my daily discomfort. 



