84. PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON. 
the removal of the pupils to the higher departments, the use 
of signs is forbidden, and they are rarely used on the play-ground 
or between the pupils, either in or out of school hours. 
In the later years of instruction they acquire great facility in 
articulation and reading from the lips, though there is almost always 
some difficulty for a stranger to understand them. 
Mr. Gallaudet had referred to the International Convention of 
deaf-mute teachers and their friends, at Milan, three yearsago. Mr. 
Hubbard was present at the convention held this year at Brussels, 
and was there informed that a delegate had been sent from France 
to attend the convention at Milan and investigate the method of in- 
struction in Italy, where articulation was used, for the purpose of 
deciding whether the instruction in the French schools should con- 
tinue to be by signs, or instruction by articulation be substituted 
for signs. 
The preference of the delegate had been for signs, but on witness- 
ing the results obtained in the Italian schools and hearing the dis- 
cussion, he was led to advise that the instruction in the French 
schools hereafter be by articulation, instead of signs, and such a 
change has, Mr. Hubbard understands, been made in most of the 
schools of France. 
Mr. Hubbard learned from the reports at Brussels that almost all 
the European schools were taught by articulation, and that this means 
of instruction was being rapidly substituted for the sign language 
in England as well as in France. 
Mr. BELL, in reply to the remarks of Mr. Gallaudet, said: 
There are signs and signs. There is the same distinction between 
pantomime and the sign-language that there is between a picture 
and the Egyptian hieroglyphics. 
Pictures are naturally understood by all the world, but it would 
be illogical to argue from this that a picture-language, like that de- 
veloped by the ancient Egyptians, must also be universally intelli- 
gible. Pantomime is understood by all the world, but who among 
us can understand the sign-language of the deaf and dumb without 
much instruction and practice? 
No one can deny that pantomime and dramatic action can be 
used, and with perfect propriety, to illustrate English expressions 
so as actually to facilitate the acquisition of our language by the 
deaf; but the abbreviated and conventionalized pantomime, known 
