276 SIGN LANGUAGE AMONG NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS. 
not be taught by sound, frequently have been by signs, and probably 
all of them understand maw’s gestures better than his speech. They 
exhibit signs to one another with obvious intention, and they also have 
often invented them as a means of obtaining their wants from man. 
GESTURES OF YOUNG CHILDREN. 
The wishes and emotions of very young children are conveyed in a 
small number of sounds, butin a great variety of gestures and facial ex- 
pressions. A child’s gestures are intelligent long in advance of speech; 
although very early and persistent attempts are made to give it instrue- 
tion in the latter but none in the former, from the time when it begins 
risu cognoscere matrem. It learns words only as they are taught, and 
learns them through the medium of signs which are not expressly taught. 
Long after familiarity with speech, it consults the gestures and facial 
expressions of its parents and nurses as if seeking thus to translate or 
explain their words. These facts are important in reference to the 
biologic law that the order of development of the individual is the same 
as that of the species. 
Among the instances of gestures common to children throughout the 
world is that of protruding the lips, or pouting, when somewhat angry 
or sulky. The same gesture is now made by the anthropoid apes and is 
found strongly marked in the savage tribes of man. It is noticed by 
evolutionists that animals retain during early youth, and subsequently 
lose, characters once possessed by their progenitors when adult, and still 
retained by distinct species nearly related to them. 
The fact is not, however, to be ignored that children invent words as 
well as signs with as natural an origin for the one as for the other. An 
interesting case was furnished to the writer by Prof. BELL of an infant 
boy who used a combination of sounds given as “‘nyum-nyum,” an evident 
onomatope of gustation, to mean “good,” and not only in reference to 
articles of food relished but as applied to persons of whom the child was 
fond, rather in the abstract idea of “niceness” in general. It isa singu- 
lar coincidence that a bright young girl, a friend of the writer, in a letter 
describing a juvenile feast, invented the same expression, with nearly the 
same spelling, as characteristic of her sensations regarding the delicacies 
provided. The Papuans met by Dr. Comrie also called “eating” nam- 
nam. But the evidence of all such cases of the voluntary use of articu- 
late speech by young children is qualified by the fact that it has been 
inherited from very many generations, if not quite so long as the faculty 
of gesture. 
GESTURES IN MENTAL DISORDER. 
The insane understand and obey gestures when they have no knowl- 
edge whatever of words. It is also found that semi-idiotie children who 
cannot be taught more than the merest rudiments of speech can receive 
a considerable amount of information through signs, and can express 
themselves by them. Sufferers from aphasia continue to use appro- 
