, that in very many cases the more difficult sounds, i. e., those
that require a more complicated muscular action, are either omitted or
have their places supplied by others; but this rule does not by any
means hold good universally: e. g., the sound preferred by F_{3}, _sch_,
is more difficult than _s_, and my child very often failed to produce it
as late as the first half of the fourth year.
In the twenty-second month, in the case of the intelligent little girl
F_{1}, numbering began suddenly. She took small stones from a table in
the garden, one after another, and counted them distinctly up to the
ninth. The persons present could not explain this surprising performance
(for the child had not learned to count) until it was discovered that on
the previous day some one had counted the stairs for the child in going
up. My child did not begin to count till the twenty-ninth month, and,
indeed, although he knew the numbers (their names, not their meaning),
he counted only by adding one to one (cf. above, p. 172). Sigismund's
boy, long before he formed sentences, on seeing two horsemen, one
following the other at a short interval, said, _eite_ (for Reiter)!
_noch eins!_ This proves the activity of the faculty of numbering.
The boy F_{3}, at the age of two and two thirds years, still said
_schank_ for _Schrank_ and _nopf_ for _Knopf_, and, on being told to
say _Sch-r-ank_ plainly, he said _rrr-schank_. This child from the
thirty-first month on made much use of the interrogative words.
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