PHYSIOLOGY. 
not been entirely wanting in those miser- 
able children who have grown up in a 
solitary and savage state, or who have been 
born dumb. Speech results from the enjoy- 
ment and cultivation of reason, and is, 
therefore, like that endowment, a peculiar 
and distinguishing gift bestowed on man 
alone. Instinct is sufficient for the purposes 
of brutes ; but man, who does not possess 
this, or several other assistances, in support- 
ing and defeiiding himself by his own pow- 
ers, has received the endowments of reason 
and speech. These have brought him into 
the social state, which seems to be his natu- 
ral destination, in which they enable him 
to utter his ideas and impart his desires to 
others. 
Articulated sounds are represented by 
letters that express all'their power ; and it 
will be readily admitted that man made a 
great step towards perfection, when he in- 
vented these signs, adapted to preserve and 
transmit his thoughts. Sounds are express- 
ed by the letters called vowels, which are 
letters produced by the mere passage of 
the voice through the mouth; requiring 
only a greater or less aperture of the mouth. 
Hence these are the first that the child 
utters. The consonants, which form the 
most numerous class of the alphabet, serve 
to connect the vowels, and are formed by a 
much more artificial process. These are 
classed into lahial, nasal, oral, and lingual, 
according to the parts more particularly em- 
ployed in their pronunciation. 
Stammering is a corruption of pronuncia- 
tion arising from various causes. A tongue 
too large and thick, diminished power over 
its actions, as in drunkenness, and unusual 
length of the frenum belong to this class. 
Yet sometimes the deficiency does not seem 
organic ; at least, a person who stammers 
will pronounce perfectly if he speaks slowly ; 
and it may even be entirely overcome by 
practice and instruction. 
Similar causes give rise to lisping. Want 
of the front teeth will have this etfect. 
Dumbness may be accidental, or may sub- 
sist from birth. In the former case, it arises 
from or^nic injury, which affects the me- 
chanism of the parts. In dumbness from 
birth, deafness seems to be always the 
cause ; so that the absence of speech should 
here rather be called silence. This, at 
least, is constantly the case according to 
the observation of Sicard, on the numerous 
pupils committed to his care. Here there is 
an absolute ignorance of sounds, and of 
their representative value in letters of the 
alphabet. The vocal organs exhibit no 
marks of deficiency ; they are fit, in short, 
to fulfil the uses for which nature has des- 
tined them, but they remain in a state of 
inaction because the deaf infant is not con- 
scious that he has the means of commu- 
nicating his thoughts. 
Perhaps the mechanism of Ventriloquism 
is not yet understood. The following quo- 
tation from Richerand’s Physiology will be 
sufficient to give the reader an idea of the 
subject. 
“At first I had conjectured that a great 
portion of the air expelled by expiration 
did not pass out by the mouth and nostrils, 
but was swallowed and carried into the 
stomach, reflected in some part of the diges- 
tive canal, and gave rise to a real echo ; 
but after having attentively observed this 
curious phenomenon, in Mr. Fitz-James, 
who represents it in its greatest perfection, 
I was enabled to convince myself that the 
name ventriloquism is by no means appli- 
cable, since the whole of its mechanism 
consists in a slow, gradual expiration, 
drawn in such a way that the artist either 
makes use of the influence exerted by voli- 
tion over the muscles of the parietes of the 
thorax, or that he keeps the epiglottis down 
by the base of tlie tongue, the apex of 
which is not carried beyond the dental 
arches. 
“ He always makes a strong inspiration 
just before this long expiration, and 'thus 
conveys a considerable mass of air into the 
lungs, the exit of which he afterwards man- 
ages with such address. Therefore repletion 
of the stomach greatly incommodes the 
talent of Mr. Fitz-James, by preventing the 
diaphragm from descending sufficiently to 
admit of a dilatation of the thorax, in propor- 
tion to the quantity of air that the lungs 
should receive. By accelerating, or retard- 
ing, the exit of the air, he can imitate dif- 
ferent voices, and induce his auditors to a 
belief that the interlocutors of a dialogue, 
which is kept up by himself alone, are 
placed at different distances ; and this illu- 
sion is the more complete in proportion to 
the perfection of his peculiar talent. No 
man possesses, to such a degree as Mr. Fitz- 
James, the art of deceiving persons who are 
least liable to delusion: he can carry his 
execution to five or six different tones, pass 
rapidly from one to another, as he does 
when representintf an animated dispute in 
the midst of a popular assembly.” 
On the subject of the Generative Func- 
tions, we have very little to add to what 
