his, it is generally the case (the author presumably
observed Rhenish children) that the first independent step is taken in
walking several months earlier than the first word is spoken. But the
statement of Heyfelder is not correct, that the average time at which
sound children learn to walk ("laufen lernen") comes almost exactly at
the completion of the twelfth month. The greater part of them are said
by him to begin to walk a few days before or after the 365th day. R.
Demme observed that the greater part began to walk between the twelfth
and eighteenth months, and my inquiries yield a similar result.
Sigismund's boy could run before he imitated words and gestures, and he
did not yet form a sentence when he had more than sixty words at his
command. Of two sisters, the elder could not creep in her thirteenth
month, could walk alone for the first time in the fifteenth month, step
over a threshold alone in the eighteenth, jump down alone from a
threshold in the nineteenth, run nimbly in the twentieth; the younger,
on the other hand, could creep alone cleverly at the beginning of the
tenth month, even over thresholds, could take the first unsteady steps
alone in the thirteenth, and stride securely over the threshold alone in
the fifteenth. In spite of this considerable start the younger child was
not, by a great deal, so far advanced in articulation, in repeating
words after others, and in the use of words, in her fifteenth month, as
the elder was in her fifteenth. The latter spoke before she walked, the
former ran before she spoke (Frau von Struempell). My child could imitate
gestures (beckoning, clinching the fist, nodding the head) and single
syllables (_heiss_), before he could walk, and did not learn to speak
till after that; whereas the child observed by Wyma could stand firmly
at nine months, and walk soon after, and he spoke at the same age.
Inasmuch as in such statistical materials the important thing is to know
what is meant by "speaking for the first time," whether it be saying
_mama_, or imitating, or using correctly a word of the language that is
to be spoken later, or forming a sentence of more than one word--and yet
on these points data are lacking--we can not regard the laborious
inquiries and collections as of much value. Children in sound condition
walk for the most part before they speak, and understand what is said
long before they walk. A healthy boy, born on the 13th of July, 1873,
ran alone for the fir