MENTAL IMAGERY. 69 



made by travelers in past years, when tlie scientific exploration of the 

 world was much less advanced than it is now, and I can confidently 

 say that I have never known of any traveler, white, brown, or black, 

 civilized or uncivilized, in Africa, Asia, or Australia, who, being un- 

 provided with surveying instruments, and trusting to his memory alone, 

 has pi-oduced a chart comparable in extent and accuracy to that of this 

 barbarous Esquimau. Their powers of accurate drawing are abun- 

 dantly testified by the numerous illustrations in Rink's work, all of 

 which were made by self-taught men, and are thoroughly realistic. 



So much for the wild races of the present day ; but even the Esqui- 

 maux are equaled in their power of drawing by the men of old times. 

 In ages so far gone by that the interval that separates them from our 

 own may be measured in perhaps hundreds of thousands of years, 

 when Europe was mostly ice-bound, a race, which in the opinion of all 

 anthropologists was closely allied to the modern Esquimaux lived in 

 caves in the more habitable places. Many broken relics of that race have 

 been found ; some few of these are of bone, engraved with flints or 

 carved into figures, and among these are representations of the mam- 

 moth, elk, and reindeer, which, if made by an English laborer with the 

 much better implements at his command, would certainly attract local 

 attention and lead to his being properly educated, and in much likeli- 

 hood to his becoming a considerable artist. 



It is not at all improbable that these prehistoric men had the same 

 geographical instincts as the modern Esquimaux, whom they closely 

 resemble in every known respect. If so, it is perfectly possible that 

 scraps of charts scratched on bone or stone, of prehistoric Europe, 

 when the distribution of land, sea, and ice was very different from 

 what it is now, may still exist, buried underground, and may reward 

 the zeal of some future cave explorer. 



I now return to m j principal topic, the mental imagery of the Eng- 

 lish race, and I will mention some of the chief peculiarities I have 

 noted in it. When the faculty is strong it is apt to run riot. There 

 are a few pei'sons, including men and women of no mean capacity, who 

 can not disentangle even the letters of the alphabet from the oddest 

 associations with colors, formed in some half -forgotten period of child- 

 hood/ To some of these persons it may be that an a will always con- 

 vey the sense of blackness, an e that of greenness, an i will be blue, an 

 o white, and a u red. The consonants will also for the most part have 

 their separate tints, so that every word seems parti-colored to their 

 fancy ; and a description of scenery in a book produces an effect upon 

 their imagination very different from what the author could have fore- 

 seen. The same is true in respect to numerals, days of the week, and 

 months of the year. I have collected perhaps twenty good accounts 

 of these bizan-e tendencies from independent sources, and find them 

 to run strongly in families. They are not communicated by teaching 

 or imitation, because those who have these peculiarities are usually 



