The power of communication was considerably increased in this month by the acquisition of one exceedingly useful sign. The way in which it was developed is an interesting example of the evolution of such signs. First the baby began to use her forefinger tip for specially close investigations; at the same time she had a habit of stretching out her hand towards any object that interested her--by association, no doubt, with touching and seizing movements. Combining these two habits, she began to hold her forefinger separate from the others when she thus threw out her hand towards an interesting object; then, in the second week of the month, she directed this finger alone towards what interested her; and by the third week, the gesture of pointing was fairly in use. She pointed to the woodshed door, with her mewing cry, when she wished to see the kittens; to the garden door, with pleading sounds, when she wished to be taken thither; to the special bush from which she wished a rose. She pointed in answer, instead of merely looking, when we asked, “Where is grandpa?” “Where is Muzhik?” These questions can hardly have been understood, as questions; but it was more than ever clear that she got some idea from a good deal that we said, and now by the words alone, without the help of gestures. Doubtless she knew several simple words--words of coming and going, of food, of the kittens and the dog and the horse. All this time she had shown no great improvement in walking movements when held from above, and she had no particular ambition to walk. But in the last week of the month she began to edge along by the side of a chair, holding to it--a great advance. The first attempts at climbing, too, appeared before she was quite ten months old. In the third week of the tenth month the baby had let herself down by her hands quite cleverly from a large chair in which she had been scrambling about--a feat that must have been quite instinctive, since she did it well and easily at the first try. The last day of the month, as she hovered at the foot of the stairs (a region about which she had much unsatisfied curiosity), some one helped her to put her knee on the lower step. Thereupon she laid hold on the next one, and pulled herself up, and with the same help, mounted two steps more. At this point her aunty’s stereotyped appeal, “Don’t help her! let her alone, and let me see what she will do!” prevailed. A candle was set on a higher step as a lure, and, sure enough, the little thing, unaided, set her knee on the higher level, laid hold with her hands, and drew herself up. It is significant that true climbing movements should be so early and so easily caught at a single partial lesson; and I shall have occasion to say more about it before the story of the baby’s first year closes.