If we turn to the dates assigned to the first occurrence of a laugh, we find the uncertainties are at least equal to those encountered in the case of the smile. Darwin illustrates how a smile may gradually take on an accompaniment of sound which grows more and more laughter-like. One of his children, who, he thinks, first smiled at the age of forty-five days, developed about eight days later a more distinct and impressive smile, accompanied by a little “bleating” noise, which, he adds, “perhaps represented a laugh”. It was not, however, till much later (113th day) that the noises became broken up into the discrete sounds of a laugh. Another child of his, when sixty-five days old, accompanied his smile by “noises very like laughter”. A laughter, with all the indications of genuine fun behind it, occurred in the case of one of his children on the 110th day, when the game was tried of throwing a pinafore over the child’s face and then suddenly withdrawing it, this being varied by the father’s suddenly uncovering his own face and approaching the child’s. He adds that, some three or four weeks before this, his boy appeared to enjoy as a good joke a little pinch on his nose and cheeks. Preyer puts the date of the first laughter-like sounds, as {167} he puts that of the first smile, earlier than Darwin. He says he observed a visible and audible laugh in his boy on the twenty-third day. This was a chuckling at the view of a rose-tinted curtain. The sounds were repeated in the following weeks at the sight of slowly swinging coloured objects and at new sounds, _e.g._, those of the piano. At the same time he tells us that a prolonged loud laughter, recognisable as such by a person not looking at what was going on, first occurred in the eighth month when the boy was playing with his mother. Among the other observers it may suffice to refer to one of the most careful, Miss Shinn. This lady, who, it will be remembered, puts the date of Ruth’s first smile as early as the first month, assigns the child’s first genuine laughter to the 118th day. It was excited by the sight of the mother making faces. It is worth adding that Ruth reached her third performance eleven days later.[101]