I think hearing is the first sense to be cultivated, both in the infant and the adult suddenly deprived of eyesight. Through its ears, the child recognizes voices, detects different footfalls, is enabled to measure distance with a fair degree of accuracy, and can form a very clear idea as to the shape and dimensions of a room. All this information is conveyed to the normal child through the eyes. Dr. Illingworth, a noted educator of the blind in England, says: "Of course, there is no doubt that blindness tends to a higher and more perfect development of the sense of hearing, even in the uneducated, on the same principle that Nature almost always comes to the aid of her children in providing protective agencies of one kind or another, even in the very lowest organisms, and, naturally, for those who are blind, the sense of hearing is the first to fall back upon for this purpose. Thus it becomes more highly developed, because there is more frequent call upon, and exercise of, that sense." Another writer has said, "but a distinction should be made between sensitiveness and an ability to use the sense, between native sensory capacity of the sense organ, and the acquired ability to use that capacity." The second sense to be developed in the blind child is that of touch, and this development begins at a very early date, supplementing the sense of hearing. Long before the child is old enough to read, its fingers have become its eyes, and each of the ten fingers carries its quota of information to the active brain, the amount and quality of this information increasing with the mental development. In addition to the fingers, the nerves of the face and those of the feet contribute their share of information. The child learns to detect differences in climatic condition by the feel of the air on its face. I have often heard very young blind children exclaim, "It feels like rain! It feels like a nice day! The air feels heavy! The wind feels soft! The wind is rough today!" The nerves of the feet contribute their share of helpful knowledge, calling attention to differences in the ground often unnoticed by the eye, telling whether the path is smooth or rough, grass-grown or rock-strewn. The auditory and pedal nerves are mutually helpful, the ear recording and classifying the sounds made by the feet, often guiding them aright by recalling certain peculiarities of sound--whether the ground is hollow, whether the sidewalk is of board or cement, and whether there is a depression here or a raised place there. I often wonder how deaf-blind people walk as well as they do, when they can not hear their footfalls. I find walking much more difficult when on a crowded thoroughfare, or when passing a planing mill or boiler factory.