[page] 6

In the July number of Mind Darwin publishes some interesting psychological observations made on one of his children. Among many other curious facts recorded we may instance the child's expressing his anger when eleven months old by beating a wrong plaything given him; his showing fear when four and half months old at his father's approaching him with his back towards him; his recognising an image of his father in a mirror as such when less than two months old; and his experimenting in the "dramatic art" when thirteen months old by pretending to be angry with his father in order to have the pleasure of a subsequent reconciliation. Mr Darwin here and there suggests important psychological bearings of his facts, as in accounting for the child's fear of unfamiliar animal shapes in the Zoological Gardens, in noting how much surprise enters into laughter, and in enforcing the hypothesis that man previously to the acquisition of articulate sounds communicates his feelings and wants by means of notes falling into "a true musical scale." At the very threshold of the disquisition we are treated to the following interesting disclosures of the proceedings of the infant Darwin. "During the first seven days various reflex actions, namely, sneezing, hiccupping, yawning, stretching, and of course sucking and sneezing, were all performed." And again: "On the seventh day I touched the naked sole his foot with a bit of paper, and he jerked it away, curling at the same time his toes, like a much older child when tickled." The infant Darwin had a name of its own for food, namely "mum," and occasionally uttered it in an interrogatory note. Upon this wonderful incident Mr Darwin gravely philosophises thus "I did not then see that the fact bears on the view which I have elsewhere maintained that before man used articulate language uttered notes in a true musical scale—as does the anthropoid ape, Hylobates! He understood one word, namely, his nurse's name, exactly five months before he invented his first word, mum; and this is what might have been expected, as we know that tho lower animals easily learn to understand spoken words!"