306 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



Signs often gave to spoken words their first significance, and many primor- 

 dial roots of language are found in bodily actions. Examples are given of 

 English, Indian Greek and Latin words in connection with gesture signs for the 

 same meaning, and ihe structure of the sign-language was compared with the 

 tongues of this continent, with reference also to old Asiatic and African lan- 

 guages, showing similar operations of conditions in the same psychologic horizon. 



It is necessary to be free from the vague popular impression that some oral 

 language of the general character of that now used by man is " natural" to man. 

 There is no more necessary connection between ideas and sounds, the mere 

 signs of words that strike the ear, than there is between the same ideas and signs 

 for them which are addressed only to the eye. Early concepts of thought were 

 of direct and material characters. As is shown by what has been ascertained of 

 the radicals of language, and there does not seem to be any difficulty in express- 

 ing by gesture all that could have been expressed by those radicals. 



It may be conceded that after man had all his present faculties he did not 

 choose between the adoption of voice and gesture, and never with those facul- 

 ties was in a state where the one was used to the absolute exclusion of the 

 other. The epoch, however, to which our speculations relate is that in which he 

 had not reached his present symmetric development of his intellect, and of his 

 bodily organs, and the inquiry is : Which mode of communication was earliest 

 adopted to his single wants and informed intelligence ? With the voice he could 

 imitate distinctively but few sounds of nature, while with gesture he could exhibit 

 actions, motions, positions, forms, dimensions, directions and distances, with 

 their derivations and analogies. It would seem from this unequal division of 

 capacity that oral speech remained rudimentary long ' after gesture had become 

 an efficient mode of communication. With due allowance for all purely imitative 

 sounds, and for the spontaneous action of vocal organs under excitement, it ap- 

 pears that the connection between ideas and words is only to be explained by a 

 compact between speaker and hearer which supposes the existence of a prior 

 mode of communication. This was probably by gesture. At least we may ac- 

 cept it as a clew leading out of the labyrinth of philological confusion, and regu- 

 lating the immemorial quest of man's primitive speech. 



In the evening session Captain C. R. Button read a paper on the Grand 

 Canon of the Colorado River, of which the.following brief abstract is given : 



A picture was exhibited of a portion of the chasm about the middle of its 

 length, which was typical of its features throughout a great portion of its extent. 

 It consists of an inner and aii outer chasm. The outer chasm is about five or 

 six miles wide, with a row of palisades two thousand feet high on either side, 

 and a broad and comparatively smooth plain between. Within this plain is cut 

 the inner gorge, descending more than three thousand feet lower, and with a width 

 of about three thousand five hundred feet. The upper palisades are of very noble 

 form and uniform profiles, with a highly architectural aspect. Pictures were also 

 exhibited of the chasm as seen from below. 



