Heredity of the Sensorial Qualities. 41 



sunset, in the brightest tints of the rainbow, and in the grandest 

 scenes of nature, only a cold and dull sameness. 



3. There are some persons who seem gifted with extraordinary 

 almost supernatural powers of sight. Some cases of this 

 kind are so well attested as scarcely to admit of doubt. Thus, 

 sight at great distances and through opaque substances appears, 

 in some cases, to be proved beyond the possibility of fraud. If 

 there is any explanation of this and other like phenomena, it can 

 only be on the supposition of hyper-sesthesia of the optic nerve. 



P. Lucas gives a long account of Hirsch Daenemarck, a Polish 

 Jew, who, about the year 1840, travelled over Europe, showing by 

 decisive experiments that he could read in a closed book any 

 page or line that might be desired. 1 This man's son perceived, at 

 about the same age as his father (ten years), that he possessed 

 this same faculty, and perhaps in a more remarkable degree. 



It is hardly necessary to observe that heredity always governs 

 vision in its specific form, and that the only room for doubt 

 would be with regard to individual varieties. Thus, all species 

 of animals, from the eagle to the owl from the earth-worm with 

 its eye-points, to the spider with its facet-eyes possess a visual 

 apparatus of a structure and optical power peculiar to them, which 

 is preserved and transmitted by heredity like all other specific 

 characters, 



III. OF HEARING 



Though hearing does not possess the same scientific and 

 aesthetic importance as sight, yet it is one of our principal senses. 

 It is the basis of a science acoustics and of an art music ; 

 and, what is still more important, on it depends the possibility of 

 articulate language or speech, and, consequently, of deliberate 

 thought. If there be no hearing, there is an end of speech ; 

 suppress speech, and thought also is suppressed, with all results. 



Hearing, like sight, can have its hyper-sesthesia, its partial and 

 total anaesthesia deafness. As we have seen, there are eyes that 

 cannot distinguish certain colours ; in like manner there are ears 

 that cannot hear certain sounds.! Wollaston met with persons 



1 Lucas, i. pp. 413419. 



