172 The American Naturalist. [February, 
put her hands to her face. Then she saw at a little distance objects 
which she recognized by their shape; a coffee-mill, my hands, knives, 
forks, a plate, a cup, a watch, a handkerchief, etc., the forms of which 
she had become familiar with through touch during her long blindness, 
But she could not distinguish color. She would make hap-hazard 
guesses at red, green, blue, and yellow, but could sometimes recognize 
black and white. I was anxious to know her first optical impression 
as to the position of objects, whether they appeared right or reversed. 
With this idea in mind I showed her, first of all, a coffee-mill, held at 
the distance of a meter from her, and said, “ What is this?” “My 
coffee-mill,” said she without hesitation. ‘How do I hold it, with the 
drawer on top or on thebottom?” “It is below, as it ought to be.” 
Thinking that the child was answering in accordance with her precon- 
ceived notions contrary to her first visual sensation, I showed her a 
knife fixed vertically by two threads to a sheet of white paper, aid 
asked her to show me with her hand where was the handle of the knife, 
at the top or the bottom of the paper. She pointed immediately with 
her right hand to the handle, saying: “It is there, at the top.” This 
was correct. 
I did not indulge my scientific curiosity further at that time. At 
the second and third interviews which took place the sixth and seventh 
. day after the operation, Julie was no longer deceived as to colors, but 
she still imagined as she had at first, that everything she saw was 
within reach. Space, height and volume did not as yet exist for her. 
However, she appreciated perfectly the distance of sounds. When 
objects were held for her at less than a meter’s length, she would - 
instinctively draw back, feeling, as she said, that they would strike her 
eyes. As to everything she saw that was at more than arm’s length, 
they all seemed ranged on the same line, that is, all seemed equally 
distant. But this illusion did not last dong. The sense of touch had 
- given her such just ideas of the form, the size, and the different dimen- 
sions of buildings, persons and the objects in the midst of which she 
had lived, that ideas of perspective and appreciation of distances were 
speedily acquired. os 
At the end of fifteen days she said she had almost forgotten that she 
had ever been blind. 
Had she, in the presence of what we call the wonders of nature, 
the flowers, the trees, the monuments, the country, the storms, the sky 
with its myriad stars, the sun and the moon, that awakening of ~ n 
imagination roused by a spectacle as magnificent, as unexpected, whic 
expresses itself in an ecstatic admiration? She was astonished at all, A 
