In Grimm's great _Deutsches Wörterbuch_, the synonymy of the word _Kind_ and its semasiology are treated at great length, with a multitude of examples and explanations, useful to students of English, whose dictionaries lag behind in these respects. The child in language is a fertile subject for the linguist and the psychologist, and the field is as yet almost entirely unexplored. CHAPTER VI. THE CHILD IN THE PRIMITIVE LABORATORY. As if no mother had made you look nice.--_Proverbial Saying of Songish Indians._ Spare the rod and spoil the child.--_Hebrew Proverb._ Thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting.--_Daniel_ v. 27. He has lost his measure.--_German Saying._ _"Licking into Shape."_ Pope, in the _Dunciad_, has the well-known lines:-- "So watchful Bruin forms, with plastic care, Each growing lump, and brings it to a bear," a conceit found in Burton, Montaigne, Byron, and other writers, and based upon an old folk-belief that the cubs are born a formless lump which the mother-bear has to "lick into shape." The same idea gave rise to the "ours mal léché" of French, and our own colloquial expression "an ill-licked cub." In an Alemanian lullaby sung while washing and combing the child, occurs the following curious passage:-- "I bin e chleine Pumpernickel, I bin e chleine Bär, Und wie mi Gott erschaffe hät, So wagglen ich derher," ["I am a little Pumpernickel, I am a little bear, And just as God has fashioned me I wiggle about,"] which, perhaps, contains the same thought. In a recent article, Professor E. W. Fay offers an etymology of the word "livid" which facilitates the passage from animal to man: "_Lividus_ meant 'licked.' The word derives from an animal's licking hurts and sores on the young. A mother of the human species still kisses (licks) a child's hurt to make it well" (_Mod. Lang. Notes_, IX. 263). Who has not had his mother say: "Does it hurt? Come and let me kiss it, and make it well." Moreover, Reclus tells us, "There are Esquimaux who go further in their demonstrations of affection, and carrying their complaisance as far as Mamma Puss and Mamma Bruin, lick their babies to clean them, lick them well over from head to foot" (523. 38). Nor is it always the mother who thus acts. Mantegazza observes: "I even know a very affectionate child, who, without having learnt it from any one, licks the people to whom he wishes to show friendship" (499. 144). _Massage._ _Che nasce bella nasce maritata_,--"the girl born pretty is born married,"--says the Italian proverb, and many devices there are among primitive races to ensure the beauty which custom demands, but which nature has failed to provide. Among the Songish Indians of British Columbia, there is a saying: _Tôu ô'wuna täns ksEtctcâ'ai_,--"as if no mother had made you look nice." Doctor Boas describes the "making the child look nice" as follows (404. 20):--