The facial expressions and gestures of the congenitally blind are worthy of attention.  The most interesting and conclusive examples come from the case of Laura Bridgman, who, being also deaf, could not possibly have derived them by imitation.  When a letter from a beloved friend was communicated to her by gesture-language, she laughed and clapped her hands.  A roguish expression was given to her face, concomitant with the emotion, by her holding the lower lip by the teeth.  She blushed, shrugged her shoulders, turned in her elbows, and raised her eye-brows under the same circumstances as other people.  In amazement, she rounded and protruded the lips, opened them, and breathed strongly.  It is remarkable that she constantly accompanied her “yes” with the common affirmative nod, and her “no” with our negative shake of the head, as these gestures are by no means universal and do not seem clearly connected with emotion.  This, possibly, may be explained by the fact that her ancestors for many generations had used these gestures.  A similar curious instance is mentioned by Cardinal Wiseman (Essays, III, 547, London, 1853) of an Italian blind man, the appearance of whose eyes indicated that he had never enjoyed sight, and who yet made the same elaborate gestures made by the people with whom he lived, but which had been used by them immemorially, as correctly as if he had learned them by observation.

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.