196 PECULIARITIES IN THE HUMAN ANIMAL ECONOMY. 



communicated, expands, in process of time, into the full 

 splendour of reason and intellect. As this habitual inter- 

 course could not subsist so long, without producing mutual 

 signs and sounds, these always repeated, and gradually en- 

 graven on the memory of the child, would become perma- 

 nent expressions. The catalogue of words, though short, 

 forms a language, which will soon extend as the family 

 augments, and will always follow, in its improvement, the 

 progress of society. As soon as society begins to be formed, 

 the education of the infant is no longer individual ; since 

 the parents communicate to it, not only what they derive 

 from nature, but likewise what they have received from 

 their progenitors, and from the society to which they belong. 

 It is no longer a communication between detached indivi- 

 duals, which, as in the animals, would be limited to the 

 transmission of simple faculties, but an institution of 

 which the whole species participates, and whose produce 

 constitutes the basis and bond of society *. 



The menstrual discharge is peculiar to women, and be- 

 longs to the whole sex in all countries : so that Pliny is 

 right in regarding women as the only " animal menstruale.'' 

 " I know, indeed,'' says Blumenbach f, " that the same 

 discharge has been ascribed to other animals, particularly 

 of the order quadrumana. I have carefully inquired about 

 all the female monkeys, which I have seen for these twenty 

 years, either in menageries or carried about for public exhi- 

 bition, and have found some of them liable to uterine 

 haemorrhage which observed no period, and was regarded 

 by the more intelligent keepers as a circumstance arising 

 from disease ; although they acknowledged, that, in order 

 to excite the admiration of their visitors, they often repre- 

 sent it as true menstruation." 



The celebration of the rites of Venus is not confined in 

 man, as in animals, to a particular season of the year. 



* BcFFON by Wood, vol. 10. p. 30. 

 t De G. II. Nar. Vat. p. 51, note. 



