_LOSS OF SPEECH BY ISOLATION._

When human beings have been long in solitary confinement, been
abandoned, or otherwise have become isolated from their fellows, they
have lost speech either partially or entirely, and required to have
it renewed through gestures. There are also several recorded cases of
children, born with all their faculties, who, after having been lost
or abandoned, have been afterwards found to have grown up possessed
of acute hearing, but without anything like human speech. One of these
was Peter, "the Wild Boy," who was found in the woods of Hanover in
1726, and taken to England, where vain attempts were made to teach him
language, though he lived to the age of seventy. Another was a boy of
twelve, found in the forest of Aveyron, in France, about the beginning
of this century, who was destitute of speech, and all efforts to teach
him failed. Some of these cases are to be considered in connection
with the general law of evolution, that in degeneration the last
and highest acquirements are lost first. When in these the effort
at acquiring or re-acquiring speech has been successful, it has been
through gestures, in the same manner as missionaries, explorers,
and shipwrecked mariners have become acquainted with tongues before
unknown to themselves and sometimes to civilization. All persons in
such circumstances are obliged to proceed by pointing to objects and
making gesticulations, at the same time observing what articulate
sounds were associated with those motions by the persons addressed,
and thus vocabularies and lists of phrases were formed.