structed in signalling; and one of the first lessons that is set them is to learn the Morse code. Hence, in Colonel Pearson's force there were several acquainted with this useful alphabet, and it very soon occurred to one of them to attempt to decipher the light flashes they saw by the aid of that key. The attempt succeeded, and, to their great joy, they began to read and understand what it was their friends were saying. A mirror was forthwith erected in the Ekowe tower, as a means of reply, and before many days had elapsed, messages were sent with considerable facility. Lord Chelmsford, on his side, communicated the cheering news of a speedy release, and Colonel Pearson telegraphed daily the state of his stores and provisions. When Lord Chelmsford's forces did actually advance, Colonel Pearson, moreover, was able, by means of sunshine signals, to acquaint his chief with the movements of the enemy.

We have said that two conditions are essential to the working of the heliograph, namely, sunshine and the absence of obstacles in the path of the rays; but, in signalling over long distances, it is necessary also to take into consideration the dip of the horizon, and to have the heliograph stations located upon anl eminence. Thus it has been calculated that to signal 10 miles requires an altitude of 68 feet, 20 miles 273 feet, 30 miles 616 feet, and 50 miles 1,771 feet. These heights, however, may of course be divided between the two stations. On the other hand, sunshine signals have material advantages that must not be overlooked. The cost of working over a distance of twenty to fifty miles is much less with mirrors than with the electric telegraph, even supposing oxy-hydrogen lamps were provided for nightsignalling. Again, an enemy cannot read your signals, because he has no guide to direct him, neither is it possible for him to cut off your communications, so readily done in the case of the electric telegraph by severing the wire.

The heliograph, useful as it has proved itself, cannot, however, supersede either the electric wire or the hand flag as a means of army signalling. But it will be a valuable resource in addition to these. Every regiment in the British service has attached to it men trained as signallers, who employ flags by day and lamps by night; moreover, a field telegraph train, with wire waggons, instruments, and travelling bureaus are attached to every army corps. Provided further with the heliograph, our system of army signalling should be well nigh perfect.

H. BADEN PRITCHARD.

88

THE EDUCATION OF THE DEAF AND DUMB.

IN all ages there have been human beings to whom by birth or accident or disease the faculty of speech has been denied. Our English phrase of deaf-and-dumb is not a very accurate one, for the organs of speech are only disused because the power of hearing is absent. Children learn to speak by imitating the sounds of the voices by which they are surrounded. Hence, when deafness isolates them from the world of sound the organs of speech become disused. They are dumb because they are deaf, and not as is sometimes supposed because some mysterious paralysis has nullified the delicate and wonderful mechanism of articulate speech. Could hearing be restored, speech would quickly follow.

The total number of human beings incapable of speech was estimated by Guyot, in 1842, to be 600,000.* The inhabitants of the earth were then supposed to be 850,000,000. The proportion of the deaf-mutes was then estimated as one to 1,500. This was probably the basis of the calculation. In 1871 the proportion in the United Kingdom was one in 1,644; in 1861 it was one in 1,432. It will be sufficient to assume that throughout the world the average is now as in 1842, one deaf-mute to every 1,500 of the population at large. Since that date the careful inquiries of statisticians have increased our definite knowledge as to the number of the dwellers upon the earth. Messrs. Behm and Wagner estimated the population of the world, in 1875, to be 1,396,843,000.† The number may now be set down as 1,400,000,000. The proportion between the two classes shows that at the present moment there are 933,000 deaf-mutes in existence.

In this calculation we have taken as a basis the proportion now existing in civilised communities, but a higher rate may prevail among races less advanced.

There are various allusions to dumbness in the Bible, the earliest being the passage in Exodus iv, 11. Amongst the incidents narrated in the Gospels we have the gift of the power of speech to the dumb by Jesus: "And they bring unto him one that was deaf, and had an impediment in his speech; and they beseech him to put his hand upon him. And he took him aside from the multitude, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spit, and

Guyot, p. 341.

† Behm u. Wagner. "Die Bevölkerung der Erde." 3 ed. Gotha, 1875.

touched his tongue; And looking up to heaven, he sighed, and saith unto him, 'Ephphatha,' that is, 'be opened.' And straightway his ears were opened, and the string of his tongue was loosed, and he spoke plain." The scattered notices of the deaf and dumb in classical and medieval ages are but scanty. The Mishna contains several of those casuistical determinations in which the Talmudists rejoiced, concerning marriages in which deaf-mutes were the contracting parties. When two brothers, it is said, "one of whom is deaf and dumb, and the other sound, are married to two women not related to each other, one of whom is deaf and dumb and the other sound, should the deaf and dumb husband of the deaf and dumb woman die first, what must the sound husband of the sound woman do? He must marry his brother's relict by Yeboom, but may divorce her afterwards. When the sound husband of the sound woman dies first, the deaf and dumb husband of the deaf and dumb woman must marry her without being at liberty to divorce her."*

Herodotus tells of a dumb son of Croesus the Lydian, who recovered speech on beholding his father's life in danger at the storming of Sardis. The boy when he saw the design of the Persian, exclaimed in terror and astonishment "Oh! man, do not kill Croesus." This was the first time he had ever articulated, but he retained the faculty of speech during the remainder of his life.t

Bede has given an account of a cure of a dumb man performed

*Sola and Raphall, "Eighteen Treatises from the Mishna," 1845, p. 233.

Sir Walter Scott has introduced a similar incident at the close of the "Lord of the Isles." There is a curious instance of recovery from congenital deafness recorded in "Philosophical Transactions" (No. 312). About the age of seventeen a young man, a congenital deaf-mute, was twice attacked by fever. "Some weeks after recovery, he perceived a motion of some kind in his brain, which was very uneasy to him, and afterwards he began to hear, and, in process of time, to understand speech. This naturally disposed him to imitate what he heard, and to attempt to speak. The servants were much annoyed to hear him. He was not distinctly understood, however, for some weeks; but is now understood tolerably well. But what is singular, is, that he retains the Highland accent, just as Highlanders do, who are advanced to his age before they begin to learn the English tongue. He cannot speak any Frse or Irish, for it was in the Lowlands he first heard and spoke." The curious circumstance of his possession of the Highland accent is confirmed by the testimony of similar phenomena in Spain. "One fact," says Ticknor, "I witnessed and knew therefore personally, which is extremely curious. Not one of the pupils, of course, can ever have heard a human sound, and all their knowledge and practice in speaking must come from their imitation of the visible mechanical movement of the lips, and other organs of enunciation, by their teachers, who are all Castilians, yet each speaks clearly and decidedly and with the accent of the province from which he comes, so that I could instantly distinguish the Catalonians and Biscayans and Castilians, whilst others more practised in Spanish felt the Malagan and Andalusian tones." ("Life and Journals of George Ticknor." London, 1876. Vol. i. p. 196.) A similar case has been mentioned to me by Mr. J. J. Alley, of Manchester. E. R. became deaf and dumb at a very early age, and did not talk until he was about seventeen, when he was taught articulation by Mr. Alley. He speaks with the accent of his native county of Stafford,

by St. John of Beverley. This narrative, though curious, is not of sufficient importance to demand reproduction. That which Bede narrates as a miracle and of instantaneous occurrence may have as its substratum of truth that the saint taught the dumb youth to articulate by a process similar to that now employed in the German system. There was an idea that dumbness resulted not from deafness, but, the effect of "a common organic lesion of the lingual and auditory nerves." Hence it was thought that the education of deaf-mutes was hopeless. Rudolph Agricola, the pupil of à Kempis and Valla, and who predicted the future greatness of Erasmus, mentions a deaf-mute who was taught to understand writing, and to write down his own thoughts.

It was the penetrating mind of Cardan that, separating the conception of thought from the vehicle in which it is conveyed, conceived the theory upon which the education of the deaf and dumb is based. The possibility of indicating ideas without the intervention of sound, is the pregnant thought from which subsequent systems have been developed.

The speculative principles of Cardan were put in practice in Spain by Pedro Ponce, a monk of the order of St. Benedict, who was born at Valladolid in.1520. He is said by some to have derived his inspiration from the passage in Bede, already quoted, and by others from the ancient pantomimic representations. Ponce is said to have undertaken the education of Gaspard Burgos, who could only be admitted to the convent as a servant, because he was deaf and dumb. Few particulars have been preserved of the method he employed, but it is said that he first wrote the alphabet and then showed the motions of lips, tongue, &c., necessary to produce the sounds of which the letters were the symbol. He is said to have taught four deafmutes of high rank.

A century later than the birth of Ponce, we have Juan Pablo Bonet, whose "Reduccion de las Letras" appeared in 1620, and is the first book containing a "manual" alphabet. It is the precursor of the one-handed alphabet still generally used on the Continent and in America. One of his pupils was seen by Sir Kenelm Digby when engaged in the business of the proposed Spanish marriage, who says of this teacher, that “after strange patience, constancie, and paines he brought the young Lord to speak as distinctly as any man whatsoever; and to understand perfectly what others said, that he would not loose a word in a whole day's conversation." There was some uncertainty as to the

management of the tone of his voice, but his imitative powers were so well developed that he could echo the pronunciation of Welsh and other unfamiliar languages.

The next name of note is that of John Bulwer, an Englishman, whose singular abilities and arguments have not met with that acknowledgment which is their due. His book appeared in 1648, and is entitled "Philocophus, or the Deafe and Dumbe Man's Friend. Exhibiting the philosophicall verity of that subtle art, which may enable one with an observant eie, to heare what any man speaks by the moving of his lips." Bulwer was one of the most singular geniuses of his age, and having published a book upon "The Naturall Language of the Hand," was asked if he could not accommodate it to the use of deaf-mutes. It is remarkable, perhaps, that this did not suggest to him the manual alphabet, but the only hints of it are in the following passage :—

"But most miserable are they who are blinde, deafe, and dumbe. An example of which wretched condition we have in Platerus, of a certaine Abbot, who being made blinde, mute, and deafe, could no other way understand and perceive the mindes of others, than by their drawing letters upon his naked arm with their finger, or piece of wood; expressing some intimation unto him, out of which singly by themselves apart perceived, he collected a worde, and of many wordes a sentence; which how miserable a case it was, and how horrid the punishment of his committed sinne, any one may easily understand. A pregnant example of the officious nature of the Touch, in supplying the defect or temporall incapacity of the other senses, we have in one Master Babington, of Burntwood, in the county of Essex, an ingenious Gentleman, who through some sicknesse becoming deaf, doth notwithstanding feele words, and, as if he had an eye in his finger, sees signes in the darke; whose Wife discourseth very perfectly with him by a strange way of Arthrologie or Alphabet, contrived on the joynts of his Fingers; who, taking him by the hand in the night, can so discourse with him very exactly; for he feeling the joynts which she toucheth for letters, by them collected into words, very readily conceives what shee would suggest unto him. By which examples you may see how ready, upon any invitation of art, the Tact is to supply the defect, and to officiate for any or all of the other senses, as being the most faithfull sense to man, being both the Founder and Vicar-generall to all the rest." (Page 106.)

Bulwer names several deaf-mutes who were able, by lip-read