With regard to the sense of hearing, it is first remarked that all children for some time after birth are completely deaf, and it was not till the middle of the fourth day that Professor Preyer obtained any evidence of hearing in his child. This child first turned his head in the direction of a sound in the eleventh week, and this movement in the sixteenth week had become as rapid and certain as a reflex. At eight months, or a year before its first attempts at speaking, the infant distinguished between a tone and a noise, as shown by its pleasure on hearing the sounds of a piano; after the first year the child found satisfaction in itself striking the piano. In the twenty-first month it danced to music, and in the twenty fourth imitated song; but it is stated on the authority of other observers that some children have been able to sing pitch correctly, and even a melody, as early as nine months. One such child used at this age to sing in its sleep, and at nineteen months could beat time correctly with its hand while singing an air.

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