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 is a singular 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 articulate 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.