REMARKABLE MEMORIES.

Inangahua Times, Volume X, Issue 1522, 16 March 1885, Page 2

REMARKABLE MEMORIES.

There was a Corstcau boy who could rehearse 40,000 words, whether sense or nonsense, as they were dictated, and repeat them in the reversed order without making a single mistake. A physician at-ont sixty years ago could repeat the whole of " Paradise Lost " without a mistake, although he had not read it for twenty years. Euler, the great mathematician, when he became blind could repeat the whole of Virgil's " „Eneid," and could remember the first line and the last line in every page of the particular edition which he had been accustomed to read before he became blind.- Ono kind of retentive memory may be considered as the result of sheer work, a determination toward one particular achievement, without reference either to cultivation or to memory on other subjects. This is frequently shown by persons in humble life in regard to the Bible. An old beggarman at Stirling, known about fifty years ago as " Blind Alick," afforded an instance of this. He knew the whole of the Bible by heart, insomuch that if a senteuce was read to him, he could name book, chapter, and verse ; or if the book, chapter, and Terse were named, he could give the exact words. A gentleman, to test bim, repeated a verse, purposely making one verbal inaccuracy. Alick hesitated, named the place where the passage was to be found, but at the same time pointed out the verbal error. The same gentleman asked him to repeat tbe ninetieth verse of the seventh chapter of the Book of Numbers. Alick almost instantly replied " There is no such verse. Tbat chapter has only eighty nine verses." Gassendi bad acquired by heart 6,000 Latin verses, and in order to give his memory exercise, he was in the habit daily of reciting 600 verses from different languages. Saunders, another mathe matician, could repeat ail Horace's odes, and a great part of the other Latin authors.