30 



JAMES CLERK MAXWELL. 



[CHAP. ir. 



wards welcomed the acoustic discoveries of Helmliolz 

 was already at work. 1 



In still earlier childhood, when he returned from 

 walking with his nurse, she had generally a lapful 

 of curiosities (sticks, pebbles, grasses, etc.) picked 

 up upon the paths through the wood, which must be 

 stored upon the kitchen dresser till his parents had 

 told him all about each one. In particular, she re- 



1 From his earliest manhood his ear for music was remarkably fine 

 and discriminating, a fact (though in strict accordance with " heredity ") 

 which surprised some of those who had known him as a boy. He 

 has told me that he remembered a time when it was exquisitely painful 

 to him to hear music. This time must clearly have been subsequent 

 to 1837. The truth seems to be that his naturally keen perception 

 of sounds was interfered with by a tendency to inflammation in the 

 ear, which came to a crisis in his sixteenth year, but that having 

 outgrown this together with other signs of delicacy, his powers in this 

 respect also were developed with striking rapidity. On the other hand, 

 his shortsightedness seems hardly to have been noticed till he was 

 fourteen or fifteen. 



