The times., 1901-05-26

exhibited TO the Royal Society, the mem
bers OF which he afterward referred to
as the volk of Siety court" During his
stay in London he was taken to Drury
Lane Theatre to see Richard ILL.," but
neither the novelty nor the spIenGor of
the show nor the exhibition of passion
he occupied himself in counting the num-
Der of words which Garrick uttered dur
ing the performance. The Gentleman S
Magazine for June, 1754. informed the
public that Jedediah had returned 10 the
place of his birth without regretting any
thing which he had left behind him in
London cheerfully returning to his Gus
t0mdry work, and quite convinced that a
slice Of rusty bacon afforded a more de-
uclous repast than anything to be OBJ
tained in the great city.
Another untaught arithmetical genius
Zerah Colburn, whose abnormal develop
ment raises an interesting problem, was
the son of an American peasant He was
brought to London by his father in 1872,
when eight years old when he was exam
ined and his peculiar powers were tested
by Francis Baily and other sl1llful math-
ematicianS- 1t was found that although
he was so ignorant of the ordinary rules
of arithmetic that he could not perform
on paper single simple sum in multiple
cation or division, yet that he could men,
tally multiply any number less than ten
into itself successfully nine times, and
give the results faster than the person ap
pointed to record them could take them
down. He multiplied eight into itself fif
teen times, OF, TO use IeCnnlcdI terms,
raised IT, to the sixteenth power, and the
result consisting of fifteen digits, was
found to be right in every figure. This
was astonishing enough, but he was able
to do things even more wonderful. When
asked what nun n multiplied by itself
gave l06.929 he answered before the orig
inal number could be written down that
il was 327. And again, when asked what
number. multiplied twice into itself, gave
6S, ,336. .l25, or. to put it technically. what
was the cube root of that array of figures,
he replied with equal facility and prompt
ness that it was 645.
The mathematical experts who were ex-
amining the boy found that il was impoS-
sible to find the cube root of these nine
figures, in the shortest and most conven-
lent way. in less than three or Iour min
uteS. But what most surprised the mathe-
maticians was that he could almost as
readily answer questions for which they
had not been able to provide any system
attic procedure themselves. For instance,
he was asked to name two numbers which
multiplied together would give the number
24I, 4S3; and he Immediately named 81 and
263. which are said TO be the only two
numbers which Will do so. And when
asked to name a number which would di-
vide 360S3 exactly. he unhesitatinSly re-
piled that no number would do so. II any
of our automatically minded readers will
address themselves to this problem, they
will find that II viii give them at least a
quarter of an hours stiff calculation be-
fore they can assure themselves that 5b.US3
is what is called a prime number, or a
number only divisibe by itself and unity.
a solution which this child was. in some
mysterious way. able to see Immediately
the question was proposed TO him.
COlburn, like Buxton, seems to have had
a method of his own. but he constantly
declared that he did not know how the
answers came into his mind God put
these things into my head" he said on
being pressed for an explanation, and l
cannot put them into yours. Jedediah
lived to the a &c of siXty-five with no more
general knowledge or stock of ideas than
a child of ten. and he kept his eXtraordi-
nary calculating faculty to the end; but
Zerah. as the general culture of his mind
improved found his special power to fade
away Francis Baily was of opinion that
Zerah CoIburn's feats indicated the exis-
tenCe of certain properties of numbers
which mathematicians had not yet dis
covered. But it is perhaps equally pos
sible that they indicate capacities Of the
human mind which have hitherto been
undreamed of.-The London Globe.