Note 296 — XI. EXTRACTS FROM A FATHER’S DIARY.

Perez speaks of both the affirmative and negative movement of the head appearing about the fifteenth month (First Three Years of Childhood, Engl. transl., p. 21). Darwin finds that the sign of affirmation (nodding) is less uniform among the different races of men than that of negation. According to Preyer, while the gesture of negation appears under the form of a turning away or declining movement as an instinct in the first days of life, the accepting gesture of nodding (which afterwards becomes the sign of affirmation) is acquired and appears much later (see his full account of the growth of these movements, Die Seele des Kindes, p. 242).