if
the substitutes had been the correct sounds. In regard to the meaning,
and the frequency of use dependent upon it, it is to be observed that
the simplest ideas are most frequently expressed. When two words are
synonymous, one of them will be used exclusively by a child, because of
the rarer employment of the other by persons speaking in the child's
presence. Here, too, the local "tone" that has been mentioned made
itself felt; thus, the little girl used the word "crinoid" every day, to
designate sections of fossil crinoid stems which abounded in neighboring
gravel walks.

As to parts of speech, nouns were most readily seized; then, in order,
verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns. Prepositions and conjunctions the
child began to employ early, but acquired them slowly. Natural
interjections--_wah_, for instance--she used to some extent from the
beginning; conventional ones came rather late.

The following observations by Humphreys are very remarkable, and are, in
part, up to this time unique:

When about four months old the child began a curious and amusing mimicry
of conversation, in which she so closely imitated the ordinary cadences
that persons in an adjacent room would mistake it for actual
conversation. The articulation, however, was indistinct, and the
vowel-sounds obscure, and no attempt at separate words, whether real or
imaginary, was made until she was six months old, _when she articulated
most syllables distinctly_, without any apparent effort.

When she was eight months old it was discovered that she knew by name
every person in the house, as well as most of the objects in her room,
and the parts of the body, especially of the face. She also understood
simple sentences, such as, "Where is the fire?" "Where is the baby in
the glass?" to which she would reply by pointing. In the following
months she named many things correctly, thus using words as words in the
proper sense. The pronunciation of some final consonants was indistinct,
but all initial consonants were distinctly pronounced, except _th_, _t_,
_d_, _n_, _l_. These the child learned in the eleventh month. At this
period she could imitate with accuracy any sound given her, and had a
special preference for _ng_ (_ngang_, _ngeng_), beginning a mimicry of
language again, this time using real or imaginary words, without
reference to signification. But an obscurity of vowel-sounds had begun
again. After the first year her facility of utterance seemed