792 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION J. 
hunger for new impressions,” as it has been well called. 
Everything about him excites in turn his interest and atten- 
tion. The furniture of the nursery, the faces and the move- 
ments of those about him, his own arms and legs, attract 
his eyes, and receive for a while his most serious considera- 
tion. With a face of absorbed interest, and with all the 
solemnity of a judge, he will observe, touch, and experiment 
upon any object within his reach. He soon learns to show 
approval or disapproval. The powers of observation 
are called into play very early in the child’s life, and 
much may be done from the first in training and develop- 
ing these important factors of education, and laying the 
foundations for inquiry and original research. Many of . 
the great scientific authorities, such as Darwin, Virchow, 
Pasteur, and Paget, attribute their success in science to 
their powers of observation. Sir J. Paget, whose memoirs 
and letters were published a few weeks ago, tells us he owes 
his discovery of T'richina spiralis to this faculty. He says— 
“T may justly ascribe it to the habit of looking out and 
observing and wishing to find new things which I . had 
acquired in my previous studies of botany. All the men 
in the dissecting rooms ‘saw’ the little specks in the 
muscles, but I believe that I alone ‘looked at’ them and 
observed them.” Mrs. Hall, whose patient and minute 
okservations of the first 18 months of her son’s life 
have lately been published, tells us that, on the 216th day, 
he struck a cup with a spoon, and, lking the sound, re 
peated it. He then struck a saucer-plate; as this gave a 
clearer, more ringing sound, he at once noticed the differ- 
ence. His eyes opened wider. and, with an absorbed expres- 
sion, he hit first one and then the other as many as 20 
times.” Another baby, 319 days old, discovered that the 
sound produced by striking a plate with a spoon was dulled 
by placing the hand on the plate. This discovery in ele 
mentary acoustics afforded him infinite satisfaction, and he 
continued his experiments for some considerable time. The 
same child, in his 14th month, took off and put on again 
the lid of a can 79 times without stopping a moment, and 
with such concentrated attention that it was impossible to 
doubt that his intellect was at work. 
There is no department of educational work in which the 
study of psychology. has had more important results than 
the question of Memory. For an instructive inquiry into 
this particular function of the mind, I cannot do better than 
refer those who are interested in the subject to the works of 
Fitch, Lange, and Compayré. Memory is the power of the 
