262 MEMORY. 



memory. Often, after having formulated sentences, lie 

 would forget them before he could write them. 



I think a whole evening could be spent pleasantly, 

 though I cannot say profitably, in narrating the history 

 of wonderful memories, and sketching the characteristics 

 of their possessors. 



However fascinating would be the discussion of 

 dreams, historic and non-historic, during wakefulness 

 and during sleep, we cannot make them prominent in 

 this paper. 



An incident is related of the famous Agassiz that, sud- 

 denly awaking one night, he was in rapturous joy be- 

 cause he had seen in sleep the perfect skeleton of a fish, 

 which he believed to be entombed in a stone which he 

 possessed. But he waited till morning to sketch his 

 vision, by which to work as he should try to reveal to 

 sight his treasure. When the morning dawned, the 

 vision of the night had escaped him. But a second 

 night, a like vision appeared. On waking he produced 

 a light and attempted to sketch, but the vision had 

 gone ! A third night the vision appeared. Taught by 

 the experience of two former nights, he waited not to 

 light his lamp, but sketched as best he could on the 

 slate made ready at his bedside on the previous night. 

 The result of his effort was wholly satisfactory, and by 

 it he was guided in disentombing his treasure. His joy 

 was unbounded when his sketch proved to be almost a 

 perfect picture of the skeleton revealed. 



Probably more than one of us, when in school, dream- 

 ed the correct solutions of problems which we could not 

 solve in wakefulness, and remembered them on the 

 following day to our great joy. 



Did that lead us to believe in dreams ? 



It may be that, to some of us, the memory of dreams ex- 

 perienced during sleep would seem somewhat less myste- 

 rious if we believed in the physical basis of memory. 



218 



