This was now accompanied by a little bleating noise, which perhaps
represented a laugh. At the age of 113 days these little noises,
which were always made during expiration, assumed a slightly
different character, and were more broken or interrupted,
as in sobbing; and this was certainly incipient laughter.
The change in tone seemed to me at the time to be connected
with the greater lateral extension of the mouth as the
smiles became broader.
In a second infant the first real smile was observed at about the same
age, viz. forty-five days; and in a third, at a somewhat earlier age.
The second infant, when sixty-five days old, smiled much more broadly
and plainly than did the one first mentioned at the same age;
and even at this early age uttered noises very like laughter.
In this gradual acquirement, by infants, of the habit of laughing,
we have a case in some degree analogous to that of weeping.
As practice is requisite with the ordinary movements of the body,
such as walking, so it seems to be with laughing and weeping.
The art of screaming, on the other hand, from being of service
to infants, has become finely developed from the earliest days.
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