Los Angeles herald., 1909-12-17
Feats of Memory
Bv Frederic j. Haskin

gift in language was a miraculous en-
dowment. and the pope shared his
opinion.
Ore of the most remarkable mathe-
matical memories of history was that
of Tedediah Buxton, born in England
in the days of Garrick. He could meas
ure distance with his eye to the very
breadth of q hair and could guess the
flight of time to n second so aston
ishing were his feats of memory that
the learned men of London examined
him and certified to the success WIN
which he met the hardest tests I'M
posed upon him. At last they took him
to see the immortal Garrick in Rich
ard Ill" When he came away MS con-
Versation was about the number OF
steps the dancers took, the number or
sounds uttered by Garrick, and the
number of words spoken by the Whole
cast.
But all the great men Of tenacious
memory did not live in the remote past
1t is said that John Stuart Mil began
studying Greek at 3 years of age, ana
that by he had read Xenophon
"Anabasis," Socrates Memorabilia
and six of the dialogues Of Plato. Prof.
Asa Gray it is said, could recall the
names of $4,000 flowers, and Prof. The
odore Gill could classify the same num-
ber of fishes In 1895 an illiterate peas
ant woman went to st. Petersburg ana
gave exhibitions showing that she could
recite without a slip 10000 folk songs
and poems.
Perhaps the most remarkable in
stance OF a precocous illiterate mind Is
that related as the experience of the
learned DR.. Moffatt, a missionary to
Africa. He had preached a long sermon
to q tribe of woodsmen, and after 1t
was over sat down to rest. little
while later he saw a commotion among
the tribesmen some distance on, ana
went to investigate. There he wound q
trbesman on n stump delivering ms
own sermon verbatim, not even neg
lecting a single infection or n single
gesture. The savage was given the
name Of the great human phono-
graph"
The English mathematician Wallas
was able, without any aid to his mem
ory, to extract the square root of
number of hfty-three digits. George
Coburn, born in Vermont, at the age OF
could tell how many seconds there
were in any given number OF days or
years, and at seven years old he raised
eight to its sixteenth power without
the slightest aid to his memory and
did IL I'm two minutes. He could tind
the square root of a number of six
der. an Englishman. was able to cal
culate the interest on 4444 pounds ster-
ling for 4444 days at AZ per cent In
two minutes.
It is said that many of the Polynesian
tribal chiefs can reclte their genealogy
so far back that il takes days and
weeks for the recital. and yet never
make a slip; while many of the Brah-
min priests carry ten thousand verses
OF the Rig Veda in their heads. Many
son of Islam knows his Koran by
rote and il is said that Professor S. n
McCann, now of Bridgewater. va, but
for years a missionary in India, has
almost completed the memorization of
the Bible He had learned the New
Testament nearly fifteen years ago.
The gree test example OF infantile
precocity in the world is said to have
been Christian Henry Heinecken, born
in Germany in 1921. At il months he
knew the history of the Bible. At 30
months he understood geography, his
tory, the use of maps, had mastered
anatomy and learned 5000 Latin words.
In his fourth year he completed
course in ecclesiastical history, the doc
trine of divinity, proofs OF the Bible,
knew 200 hymns and their tunes, eighty
psalms and 1900 verses from the clas-
sizes. Besides, he had mastered arith-
metic and four languages. No wonder
he died before ne was years Ola!
The great critic, Joseph Scalinger Is
said 10 have been the most profound
scholar in history, so far as stored
knowledge Is concerned. He learned
all the works of Homer by rote i'm
twenty-one days, and In three months
more he had mastered the rest of the
Greek poets In two years he was able
TO quote verbatim any passage from
the whole range of classic literature.
Whence comes the memory? Surgi-
cal experience has taught something
about II. Many instances are recorded
where a blow on the head has blotted
out the memory entirely, and that when
surgeons operated on the victim with
success the memory would begin again
as from the time of the blow. In one
case a soldiers skull was injured by
dying piece of shell. For years his
mind was a blank. Then a skilled sur
geon performed an operation, and his
memory started again from that fateful
day on the battle field.
Tomorrow--The Landing OF the MayhOwer