sential points on the subject.

Another cause for the mistaken denial in question must be mentioned.
When travelers or sojourners have become acquainted with signs in
any one place they may assume that those signs constitute _the_ sign
language, and if they afterwards meet tribes not at once recognizing
those signs, they remove all difficulty about the theory of a "one and
indivisible" sign language by simply asserting that the tribes so met
do not understand _the_ sign language, or perhaps that they do not
use signs at all. This precise assertion has, as above mentioned, been
made regarding the Utes and Apaches. Of course, also, Indians who have
not been brought into sufficient contact with certain tribes using
different signs, for the actual trial which would probably result
in mutual comprehension, tell the travelers the same story. It is
the venerable one of "[Greek: aglossos]," "Njemez," "barbarian," and
"stammering," above noted, applied to the hands instead of the tongue.
Thus an observer possessed by a restrictive theory will find no signs
where they are in plenty, while another determined on the universality
and identity of sign language can, as elsewhere explained, produce,
from perhaps the same individuals, evidence in his favor from the
apparently conclusive result of successful communication.

PERMANENCE OF SIGNS.

In connection with any theory it is important to inquire into the
permanence of particular gesture signs to express a special idea or
object when the system has been long continued. Many examples have
been given above showing that the gestures of classic times are still
in use by the modern Italians with the same signification; indeed that
the former on Greek vases or reliefs or in Herculanean bronzes
can only be interpreted by the latter. In regard to the signs of
instructed deaf-mutes in this country there appears to be a permanence
beyond expectation. Mr. Edmund Booth, a pupil of the Hartford
Institute half a century ago, and afterwards a teacher, says in the
"_Annals_" for April, 1880, that the signs used by teachers and pupils
at Hartford, Philadelphia, Washington, Council Bluffs, and Omaha were
nearly the same as he had learned. "We still adhere to the old sign
for President from Monroe's three-cornered hat, and for governor we
designate the cockade worn by that dignitary on grand occasions three
generations ago."

The specific comparisons made, especially by Dr. Washington Matthews