Automatic Action of the Cerebrum. 837 



Another case is given by Abercrombie of a distinguished Scottish 

 lawyer who had been consulted in regard to an important case, and 

 studied it anxiously for several days without a satisfactory result. One 

 night, his wife observed him to get up and take his seat at a writing- 

 desk which was in the room, where he wrote a long paper which he 

 folded, and laid away in the desk, and then returned to bed. Next 

 morning he told his wife that he had dreamed out the problem he had 

 so long wrestled with, and said he would give an} T thing to be able to 

 recover the train of thought by which it was done. " She then directed 

 him to the writing-desk where he found the opinion clearly and fully 

 written out ; and this was afterwards found to be perfectly correct. " 



It is said that parliamentary reporters have been known to fall asleep 

 while a member was speaking, and to continue to take down his words 

 for a short time unconsciously, yet correctly. 



An anecdote is related of a person who was sent for, to visit a friend 

 who was dangerously ill at the house of a physician in a distant town. 

 On his wajr to the place he totally forgot the name of the physician 

 with whom his friend was. He read over a post-office directory, think- 

 ing that a sight of the name would stimulate the memory, but it did not. 

 But afterwards, when his thoughts were temporarily diverted to the sub- 

 ject of his breakfast, the name flashed into his consciousness. He had 

 seen the name in the directory without effect. 



Dozens of cases like the above could be named, where things have 

 unaccountably disappeared and have been supposed stolen or lost, when 

 at last it will occur to the loser that he has himself laid the thing away 

 in a particularly safe and secure place, and so recovers it. 



A civil engineer once hid his leveling instrument under a big rock ten 

 miles from town, but did not return to use it next day as he expected. 

 A week later when he did want to use it, he had totally forgotten hav- 

 ingf hid it, and after diligent search in usual and unusual places, con- 

 cluded it had been stolen by a circus troupe which had then departed to 

 the next town. He swore out a search warrant, followed the show, and 

 thoroughly ransacked the entire outfit, to no purpose. He had an assist- 

 ant who shared the lapse of memory and the worry of the search. At 

 last, when both were completely " beat," the remembrance of the rock 

 returned to the assistant with the suddenness of a flash. 



Oliver Wendell Holmes says, "The tree you are sticking in, will be 

 growing when you are sleeping. So with every new idea that is planted 

 in a real thinker's mind ; it will be growing when he is least conscious 

 of it. An idea in the brain is not a legend carved on a marble slab; it 

 is an impression made on a living tissue, which is the seat of active nu- 

 tritive processes." 



Facts dumped promiscuously, as it were, into our brain, will, if left 



