THE PERCEPTdON OF SPACE. 205 



cover than one composed of a number of small panes. From this it 

 would appear that glass is a bad conductor of sensation, or at any rate 

 of the sensation specially connected with this sense. When objects 

 below the face are perceived, the sensation seems to come in an oblique 

 iine from the object to the upper part of the face. While walknig with 

 a friend in Forest Lane, Stratford, I said, pointing to a fence which 

 separated the road from a field, 'Those rails are not quite as high as 

 my shoulder.' He looked at them, and said they were higher. We. 

 however, measured, and found them about three inches lower than my 

 shoulder. At the time of making this observation I was about four 

 feet from the rails. Certainly in this instance facial perception was 

 more accurate than sight. When the lower part of a fence is brick- 

 work, and the upper part rails, the fact can be detected, and the line 

 where the two meet easily perceived. Irregularities in height, and pro- 

 jections and identations in walls, can also be discovered." 



According to Mr. Levy, this power of seeing with the 

 face is diminished by a fog, biit not by ordinary dark- 

 ness. At one time he could tell when a cloud obscured the 

 horizon, but he has now lost that power, which he has 

 known several persons to possess Avho are totally blind. 

 These effects of aqueous vapor suggest immediately that 

 fluctuations in the heat radiated by the objects may be the 

 source of the perception. One blind gentleman, Mr. Kil- 

 burne, an instructor in the Perkins Institution in South 

 Boston, who has the power spoken of in an unusual degree, 

 proved, however, to have no more delicate a sense of tem- 

 perature in his face than ordinary persons. He himself 

 supposed that his ears had nothing to do with the faculty 

 until a complete stoppage of them, not only with cotton 

 but with putty on top of it, by abolishing the perception 

 entirely, proved his first impression to be erroneous. Many 

 blind men say immediately that their ears are concerned 

 in the matter. 



Sounds certainly play a far more prominent part in 

 the mental life of the blind than in our own. In taking a 

 walk through the country, the mutations of sound, far and 

 near, constitute their chief delight. And to a great extent 

 their imagination of distance and of objects moving from 

 one distant spot to another seems to consist in thinking 

 how a certain sonority would be modified by the change 

 of place. It is unquestionable that the semi-circular-canal 

 feelings play a great part in defining the points of the com- 



