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MR DARWIN'S NEW PAPER.

A paper by Mr Darwin, much talked of before its publication, on the results of his observations of the earliest days and years of one of his children, appears in the new number Mind.

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 touched the naked sole of his foot with bit of paper, and he jerked it away, curling at the same time his toes like a much older child tickled."

The infant Darwin had a name of its own for food, namely, "mum," and occasionally uttered it in an interrogatory note. Upon this Mr Darwin remarks: "I did not then see that the fact bears the view which have elsewhere maintained that before man used articulate language he uttered notes in 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 the lower animals easily learn to understand spoken words."