but that even a single one is, without the intervention of the persons about the child, constantly associated with one and the same idea (before other ideas have received their verbal designation--likewise by means of the members of the family--and have been made intelligible to the child), can not be shown to be probable. My observations concerning the word _atta_ (p. 122 _et al._) would tend in that direction, were it not that the _atta_, uttered in the beginning without meaning, had first got the meaning of "away," through the fact that _atta_ was once said by somebody at going away. So long as proof is wanting, we can not believe that each individual child discovers anew the fundamental fact of the expression of ideas by movements of the tongue; but we have to admit that he has inherited the faculty for such expression, and simply manifests it when he finds occasion for imitations. The first person that has attempted to fix the _number_ of all the words used by the child, independently, before the beginning of the third year of life (and these only), is an astronomer, E. S. Holden, director of the Observatory of the University at Madison, Wisconsin. His results in the case of three children have been recently published (in the "Transactions of the American Philological Association," 1887, pp. 58-68). Holden found, by help of Webster's "Unabridged Dictionary," his own vocabulary to consist of 33,456 words, with a probable error of one per cent. Allowing a probable error of two per cent, his vocabulary would be comprised between the limits of 34,125 words and 32,787 words. A vocabulary of 25,000 words and over is, according to the researches of himself and his friends, by no means an unusual one for grown persons of average intelligence and education.