42i 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the thick figure of a biid with outstretched 

 wings. The Arabs say it is a buzzard or a 

 fafcon, but Mr. Doughty suggests that the 

 eflBgies are those of the mortuary owls of 

 the old Arabians. Mr. Doughty's visit has 

 disposed of the singular fables propagated 

 by the Arabs as well as by Turkish and Per- 

 sian pilgrims, p.nd which, he says, have been 

 accepted in some works of learned Oriental- 

 ists in Europe. 



Cases of Remarkable Precocity.— From 



an entertaining paper in " Chambers's Jour- 

 nal" w^e select a few instances of "preco- 

 cious cleverness." Anne Maria Schurmann 

 was, in her day, the boast of Germany. 

 At the age of six, and without instruction, 

 she cut in paper the most delicate fig- 

 ures ; at eight, she learned in a few days 

 to paint flowers, which, it should be added, 

 were highly esteemed ; and two years later 

 it cost her only five hours' application to 

 learn the art of embroidering with ele- 

 gance. Her talents for higher attainments, 

 we are told, did not develop themselves 

 till she was twelve years of age, when 

 they were discovered in the following man- 

 ner: Her brothers were studying in the 

 apartment where she sat, and it was no- 

 ticed that, whenever their memories failed 

 in the recital of their lessons, the little girl 

 prompted them without any previous knowl- 

 edge of their tasks except what she had 

 gained from hearing the boys con them 

 over. In her education she made extraor- 

 dinary progress, and is said to have per- 

 fectly understood the German, Low-Dutch, 

 French, English, Latin, Greek, Italian, He- 

 brew, Syriac, Chaldean, Arabic, and Ethio- 

 pian languages. Her knowledge of science 

 and her skill in music, painting, and sculp- 

 ture were also extraordinary ; and her talent 

 for modeling was shown by the wax portrait 

 she contrived to make of herself with the 

 aid of a mirror. 



Another prodigy was Dorothy Schlozer, 

 a Hanoverian lady, who was thought wor- 

 thy of the highest academical honors of the 

 t^niversity of Gottingen, and had the de- 

 gree of Doctor in Philosophy conferred 

 upon her when she was only seventeen 

 years of age. Before she was three years 

 old she was taught Low-German ; and three 

 years later learned French and German; 



and, after receiving ten lessons in geometry, 

 was able to answer abstruse questions. Oth- 

 er languages were next acquired with singu- 

 lar rapidity; and before she was fourteen 

 she knew Latin and Greek, and had become 

 a good classical scholar. She also made 

 herself acquainted with almost every branch 

 of polite literature, as well as many of the 

 sciences. As an instance of this lady's in- 

 defatigable industry, it may be mentioned 

 that she visited the deepest mines in the 

 Harz Forest in the common garb of a la- 

 borer, to gain proficiency in mineralogy. 



It is said that Blaise Pascal, one of the 

 most profound thinkers and accomplished 

 writers of France, exhibited precocious 

 proofs of genius, especially in mathematics, 

 from his earliest childhood. Having been 

 purposely kept in ignorance of geometry, 

 lest his propensity in that direction should 

 interfere with the prosecution of other stud- 

 ies, his self-prompted genius discovered for 

 itself the elementary truths of the forbid- 

 den science. When quite a boy, he was 

 discovered by his father in the act of de- 

 monstrating on the pavement of an old hall 

 where he used to play, and by means of a 

 rude diagram he traced with a piece of coal 

 a proposition which corresponded to the 

 thirty-second of the First Book of Euclid. 

 At the age of sixteen he composed a tractate 

 on conic sections, which excited great ad- 

 miration. Three years later he invented his 

 celebrated arithmetical machine ; and at the 

 age of twenty-six he had composed the 

 greater part of his mathematical works, and 

 made those brilliant experiments in hydro- 

 statics and pneumatics which ranked him 

 among the first natural philosophers of his 

 time. 



Discrimination and Memory of Sonnds. 



— Some very extraordinary feats of mem- 

 ory are by the " Scientific American " cred- 

 ited to a youth named Hicks, residing in 

 Rochester, New York. Hicks has not lived 

 long in Rochester, having removed thither 

 lately from Buffalo ; yet he is able to give 

 the numbers of nearly three hundred loco- 

 motives on hearing their bells. During the 

 day he is employed at so great a distance 

 from the railway that he rarely hears a pass- 

 ing train ; but at night he can hear every 

 train, as his house is situated near the rail- 



