to nurses and medical men. This circumstance is not exclusively due
to the lacrymal glands being as yet incapable of secreting tears.
I first noticed this fact from having accidentally brushed with the cuff
of my coat the open eye of one of my infants, when seventy-seven days old,
causing this eye to water freely; and though the child screamed violently,
the other eye remained dry, or was only slightly suffused with tears.
A similar slight effusion occurred ten days previously in both eyes
during a screaming-fit. The tears did not run over the eyelids and roll
down the cheeks of this child, whilst screaming badly, when 122 days old.
This first happened 17 days later, at the age of 139 days.
A few other children have been observed for me, and the period of free
weeping appears to be very variable. In one case, the eyes became
slightly suffused at the age of only 20 days; in another, at 62 days.
With two other children, the tears did NOT run down the face at the ages of 84
and 110 days; but in a third child they did run down at the age of 104 days.
In one instance, as I was positively assured, tears ran down at the unusually
early age of 42 days. It would appear as if the lacrymal glands required
some practice in the individual before they are easily excited into action,
in somewhat the same manner as various inherited consensual movements
and tastes require some exercise before they are fixed and perfected.
This is all the more likely with a habit like weeping, which must have been
acquired since the period when man branched off from the common progenitor
of the genus Homo and of the non-weeping anthropomorphous apes.


[7] Dr. Duchenne makes this remark, ibid. p. 39.

The fact of tears not being shed at a very early age from pain
or any mental emotion is remarkable, as, later in life, no expression
is more general or more strongly marked than weeping. When the habit