74 GESTUEE-LANGUAGE AND WOED-LANGUAGE. 



(doll) J "bitte" (please).-^ All the sounds in these words are 

 such as deaf persons may imitate by sight. 



An extraordinary story of this kind is told by Eschwege, 

 who was a scientific traveller of high standing, and upon whom 

 the responsibility for the truth of the narrative must rest. The 

 scene is laid in a place in the interior of Brazil, where he rested 

 on a journey, and his account is as follows : — " I was occupied 

 the rest of the day in quail-hunting, and in making philoso- 

 phical observations on a deaf-and-dumb idiot negro boy about 

 thirteen years old, with water on the brain, and upon whom 

 nothing made any impression except the crowing of a cock, 

 whose voice he could imitate to the life. Just as people teach 

 the deaf-and-dumb to speak, so this beast-man, by obsei-ving 

 and imitating the movements of the neck and tongue of the 

 cock, had in time learnt to crow, and this seemed the only 

 pleasure he had beyond the satisfaction of his natural wants. 

 He lay most part of the day stark naked on the ground, and 

 crowed as if for a wager against the cock.'^ ^ 



Returning to the list of words given by Heinicke, it does not 

 seem easy to set down any of them as lip -imitations, unless it 

 be "heschbefa" " Gott bewahre!" in which befa may be an 

 imitation of bewahre. We have, then, left several articulate 

 sounds, such as " patten," money, " tutten," child, etc., which 

 seem to have been used as real words, but of which it seems 

 impossible to say why the dumb lad selected them to bear the 

 meanings which he gave them. 



The vocal sounds used by Laura Bridgman are of great 

 interest from the fact that, being blind as well as deaf-and- 

 dumb, she could not even have imitated words by seeing them 

 made. Yet she would utter sounds, as " ho-o-ph-ph " for 

 wonder, and a short of chuckling or grunting as an expression 

 of satisfaction. When she did not like to be touched, she 

 would say, /.' Her teachers used to restrain her from making 

 inarticulate sounds, but she felt a great desire to make them, 

 and would sometimes shut herself up and " indulge herself in 

 a surfeit of sounds." But this vocal faculty of hers was chiefly 



' SctiTiialz, p. 216 a, 



- Eacliwege, ' Brasilieu ;' Brunswick, 1830, part i. p. 59. 



