CHARLES BABBAGE. 179 



that you and I should make such a very diiferent use of the faculty of 

 imaginatiou. When I go to the house of a friend in the country and 

 unexpectedly remain for the night, having no night-cap I should natu- 

 rally catch cold. But by tying a piece of pack-thread tightly round my 

 head, I go to sleep imagining that I have a night ca^g on; consequently I 

 catch no cold at all." 



" I was once asked by an astute and sarcastic magistrate, whether I 

 seriously believed that a man's brain would be injured by listening to an 

 organ. My reply was. Certainly not, for the obvious reason that no man 

 having brains ever listened to street musicians." 



These fragmentary quotations, however, scarcely do Mr. Babbage 

 justice. Let us allow him to tell one of the many experiences of his life 

 in his own way. 



Under the head of " Hints for travelers," in his " Passages from the 

 life of a philosopher," Mr. Babbage says: 



''A man may, without being a proficient in any science, often make 

 himself useful to those who are most instructed. However limited the 

 path he may himself pursue, he will insensibly acquire other informa- 

 tion in return for that which he can communicate. I will illustrate this 

 by one of my own pursuits. I possess the smallest possible acquaint- 

 ance with the vast fields of animal life, but at an early period I was 

 struck by the numerical regularity of the pulsations and the breathings. 

 It appeared to me that there must exist some relation between these two 

 functions. Accordingly I took every opportunity of counting the num- 

 bers of the pulsations and the breathings of various animals. The pig 

 fair at Pavia and the book fair at Leipsic equally placed before me 

 menageries in which I could collect such facts. Every zoological collec- 

 tion of animals which I visited thus became to me a source of facts 

 relating to that subject. This led me at another period to generalize the 

 subject of inquiry, and to print a skeleton form for the constants of the 

 class mammalia. It was reprinted by the British Association at Cam- 

 bridge in 1833, and also at Brussels in the Travaux du Congres General 

 de Statisque in 1853. 



" One of the most useful accomplishments for a philosophical traveler 

 I learned from a workman who taught me how to punch a hole in a 

 plate of glass. The process is simple. Two center-punches, a hammer, 

 an ordinary bench- vise, and an old file, are all the tools required. Hav- 

 ing decided upon the part of the glass, scratch a cross ( x ) upon the spot 

 with the point of an old file, turn the glass over and scratch the same 

 on the other side corresponding. Fix one of the small center-punches 

 with its point upward in the vise. Let an assistant hold the glass with 

 its scratched point ( x ) resting upon the point of the punch. Take the 

 other punch, place its point in the center of the upper scratch, hit it 

 very slightly twice or thrice, turn the glass two or three times, repeat- 

 ing the slight blows, and the hole is formed. 



" The principles of this are, that glass is a material breaking in every 



