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There is still another illustration of the universality of the natural language of signs in the immediate facility with which an intelligent, uneducated deaf-mute, arriving at the Asylum, is always found to hold communication with its inmates. After a short residence in the family, he makes rapid progress in this natural language of signs, enlarged as it is by culture into greater copiousness, and marked by more precision and accuracy than in those detached families throughout the country in which insulated deaf-mutes exist, and improved into a somewhat regular system by the skill of those who have been engaged for a long course of years in tit is department of education. . Yet it retains its original features. It is not an arbitrary, conventional language. It is, in the main, picture-like and symbolical, corresponding, in these respects, to the ideas and objects which it is used to denote. The newly arrived deaf-mute has been well acquainted with its elements in the home of his childhood. He recognizes them as the same which constituted the basis of those very signs which he and others around him have already invented, and used, and sometimes they prove to be identically the same with his old ones, or so nearly so that they are at once intelligible to him. He finds himself, as it were, among his countrymen. They use his native language; more copious, indeed, and elevated than that to which he had been accustomed, but yet virtually the same; so that, perceiving at the outset that he understands others and that they understand him, he is encouraged to proceed, and, to his surprise, in a comparatively short space of time, slides into a familiar acquaintance with the language of natural signs in its full extent, as employed by the more advanced pupils and by the instructors themselves in the little community of which he has become a member.

The contentment which this throws around his new lot, removed as he is from the endearments of his native home; the pleasure which he derives from the acquisitions that he is constantly making, in the varieties of a more enlarged medium of social intercourse adapted to his peculiar condition, and of interesting and useful knowledge, from his better instructed associates and from the teachers; the delightful consciousness of his expanding powers of thought and feeling; the hope of future progress; and the ability, all the while, to make his wants and wishes known, and thus to obtain sympathy, counsel, and aid, -- all these things go not only to show what the natural language of signs is, a much more definite, copious, and effective language than many may suppose it to be, but to prove and illustrate its immense value to the deaf and dumb, especially to those who have just arrived at an institution for their benefit and are commencing the course of instruction, and to those, too, who are concerned in giving this instruction.

To show how nature, when necessity exists, prompts to the invention and use of this language of signs, and to exhibit from another interesting point of view the features of its universality, a fact is worth mentioning, to be found in Major Stephen H. Long's account of an Expedition from Pittsburgh to the Rocky Mountains, in 1819. It seems, from what he tells us, that the aboriginal Indians, west of the Mississippi, consist of different tribes, having either different languages or dialects of the same language. Some are unable to communicate with others by speech; while they have fallen into a language of signs to remedy this inconvenience, which has been long used among them.

Major Long's work contains an accurate description of many of these signs, and it is surprising to notice how not a few of them are almost identically the same with those which the deaf and dumb employ to describe the same things, while others have such general features of resemblance as to show that they originate from elements of this sign-language which nature furnishes to man wherever he is found, whether barbarous or civilized. Such are the following:

Sun. -- The forefinger and thumb are brought together at tip, so as to form a circle, and held upwards towards the sun's track. To indicate any particular time of the day, the hand with the sign of the sun is stretched out towards the east horizon, and then gradually elevated, to show the ascent of that luminary, until the hand arrives in the proper direction to indicate the part of the heavens in which the sun will be at the given time.

Moon. -- The thumb and finger open are elevated towards the right ear. This last sign is generally preceded by the sign of the night or darkness.

Seeing. -- The forefinger, in the attitude of pointing, is passed front the eye towards the real or imaginary object.

Theft. -- The left forearm is held horizontally, a little forward of across the body, and the right hand, passing under it with a quick motion, seems to grasp something, and is suddenly withdrawn.

Truth. -- The forefinger is passed, in the attitude of pointing, from the mouth forward in a line curving a little upward, the thumb and other fingers being completely closed.