112 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



important part in the event that is recollected, as in the following 

 example : " My father was holding me at the window of the ground 

 floor in which we resided, and, balancing me now to the right and 

 now to the left, he made me play hide and seek with one of his 

 friends, whose hairy, laughing face I still remember. This memory 

 goes back to an age when I could hardly walk, and could not speak — 

 when I was about two years old." A professor's recollection is of a 

 garden planted with flowers and vegetables, inclosed by a hedge 

 with a green wooden gate. " The image of the garden is floating 

 and vague, like the recollection, except that the gate is retained in 

 my memory with a really surprising precision of details. I see it 

 now, with its leather hinges, nailed to a rough post, and slimy with 

 the moisture; and I see hanging to that gate a rude boy, the terror 

 of the children of his age, who clung there with tense legs and 

 clinched hands, all doubled up, with a grinning face and his eyes 

 glowing with mischief through the intervals of the bushy red hair 

 that fell over them — a cynically grotesque figure. A cracking was 

 heard, and all the urchins ran away like a flock of frightened spar- 

 rows, this one in the lead shouting shrilly and ironically. All the 

 details of this scene have remained very precise in memory, and yet 

 I can not say that I recollect the mocking cries of this youngster. I 

 do not hear them now. I was then sixteen or eighteen months old ; 

 not more than two years at most." We transcribe this example in 

 full because it illustrates the usually indefinite character of auditive 

 recollections. Some persons recall them more distinctly, and some 

 can remember words that were spoken, but not by the sound. A 

 few persons who have analyzed their remembrances subsequent to 

 the earliest — of seven, ten, or fifteen years of age — observe that audi- 

 tive memory comes later than visual. 



We have the same affirmation in a large number of responses 

 of the manner in which the subject himself is represented. He sees 

 himself as a child, but does not feel himself a child. He has a 

 picture in which there is a child, and knows that he is the child. " I 

 see myself in the view as somebody outside of me." " I am at the 

 seashore and my mother is holding me in her arms. The picture 

 appears to me as if I was away from the scene." Many of the an- 

 swers describe the feature thus. 



Other sorts of perceptions rarely make part of the earliest recol- 

 lection. Only three persons speak of the pain of an operation. 

 Taine cites a fact of this kind. " M. Brierre de Boismont, having 

 had a scalp disease when a child, declares that he still feels the pull- 

 ing of the hair in the treatment of his skull." One example occurs 

 among the answers we received: "I had the croup when I was 

 twelve months old, and it was necessary to burn all the ulcers in 



