5 o 4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



to trees or plants which actually sprang from the remains of the 

 dead, and so were regarded, like everything else that came out of 

 the tomb, as embodiments or avatars of the dead man's spirit. 

 Once such sanctity came to be generally recognized, however, it 

 could be readily transferred to other conspicuous or remarkable 

 trees, or even to trees in general, and particularly to the special 

 groves or plantations that surrounded temples, whether mortuary 

 or cenotaphic. 



Yet in every case, when we go back far enough in time, or, 

 what comes practically to the same thing, when we go down low 

 enough in culture toward the savage level of primitive man, we 

 find always that we stand nearer face to face with these the ear- 

 liest naked realities of religion — that the ghost counts for most ; 

 that the temple has not progressed beyond the stage of the hut or 

 underground dwelling ; that the sacred stone is still the actual 

 tombstone ; that the altar is still the actual grave slab ; that the 

 sacred tree is still directly and intimately connected with the 

 ghost or the tumulus. 



[To be continued.'] 



NUMBER FORMS. 



By G. T. W. PATRICK, 



PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE STATE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA. 



IN the Atlantic Monthly for February, 1873, Miss H. R. Hudson, 

 writing on idiosyncrasies, says, " The nine digits will ascend 

 in a straight line before my mind's eye, and the larger 

 numbers will slant off at a queer angle " thus : 20 



About twelve years ago Francis Gal- 18 



ton, in England, while engaged in an in- ^ 



vestigation into the visualizing peculiari- 15 



ties of different persons, discovered that 14 



the possession of "number forms" was 12 



not uncommon. Some of these "forms" n 



were given by him to the public in Nature 9 

 for January 15, 1880, and afterward a col- 8 

 lection of about sixty-five of them was 6 

 published in his book on Inquiries into 5 

 Human Faculty. These were accompa- g 

 nied by many descriptive details, but Gal- 2 

 ton did not attempt any complete expla- l 

 nation of the number form in general. 



Neither is it the purpose of this article to attempt such an ex- 

 planation, but rather to add to Galton's list some thirty-five or 



