TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Press, Volume L, Issue 8581, 7 September 1893, Page 4

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Jacques Inandi, the lightLa Lightning ning calculator who has reCalculator, centlybeenastonishing London by the ease with which he solved off-hand the most complicated problems in figures which the mind of man could conceive, has paid the usual penalty of fame nowadays, in the shape of an interview. Over the supper table one night after leaving the theatre where he had been exhibiting his powers, Inandi told a Sketch representative his early history. At one time, he said, his father owned a comfortable little farm in Piedmont, bub was an ardent devotee to gambling, and gradually squandered his property in " Mora," a favourite Italian game of numbers. His mother was much worried over tbis incessant " Mora " and, its evil consequences, and so, said Inandi, " It came about that when I Was born I came into the world with my head full of figures—well, so it was said." There could be but one result of his father's gambling, and in process of time everything had goue, and Jacques and his brothers tramped the country, dancing and playing their pipes, living on charity. He then engaged himself as a shepherd lad, but was discovered one day when he was six years old by his brothers just as he had earned fifty centimes by settling a dispute over figures between two- peasants. -Grasping the situation, his brothers turned him into a small but steady source of income, by making him frequent the cafes and show off his powers by solving-problems for the customers. In this way, he said, he made many a sou for his brothers. He did not say what percentage of his earnings he was allowed to keep for himself, but big brothers are notoriously .unsympathetic, and may .have realised that by making Jacques use his brain they were doing him a good service, compared to which mere base money was of very little consequence. However, at the age of nine he was discovered by a tax collector at Aix-lea-Baius, a gentleman of English extraction of the name of Dombey, who took him in hand. He was brought before the learned societies in Paris when he was twelve and was from time to time the subject of commissions of enquiry into his method of working calculations. We learn by the bye that doctors have reported that there is nothing out of the common in Inandi's physique, except that his skull is, as in the case of new-born infants, unclosed between the parietal bones, and that his facial angle is nearly 90 degrees. Naturally 'the interviewer propounded several arithmetical problems to Inandi, one of which was—" Supposing that I place in a straight line a row of apples a yard apart, extending them to the length of a mile, and then putting down a basket at the beginning, I consecutively pick up each apple separately, and drop it into the basket, how far shall I have walked ? " The answer came almost before the last few words were uttered, and each of the other questions was answered with equal rapidity. He said that in remembering figures he did care to see them written, as he recollects them purely by recalling the sound of the articulation as performed by the questioner and repeated aloud to himself. Another feature of his method is that in the subtraction and addition of long rows of figures he works from the left hand, which seems an unnecessary aggravation of the difficulty of his task, or what would be the difficulty to ordinary peraons. Finally it is satisfactory to find that lightning mental arithmetic may be recommended as another opening for our boys, for Inandi has risen by its means from being a Piedmontese shepherd to that of owner of a handsome villa near Paris. Unionist writers in EngThe land, we -notice, are beSbamrock. ginning to speculate on the probable fate of the shamrock in her Majesty's crown and arms, if Irish Home Rule is carried out to its logical conclusion. The shamrock was introduced in place of the French fleur-de-lis, which, as the PaU Mali Gazette remarks, has ceased to have any significance in the British crown, and the wearing thereof had become very different to our good friend the Emperor. Will it, in its turn, have to make room for some other emblem? The Home Rule Bill has not yet become law, and it will probably be time enough to deal with.this question when it actually arises. In the meantime a still older question has been revived, namely as to what is the Shamrock? The plant figured in Her Majesty's crown is the common creeping clover. From investigations recently made by an Irishman it was found that of all the specimens sent to him by collectors and enthusiasts as the genuine article two-thirds were the yellow trefoil (2*. procumbent) and the remaining third Dutch clover {T. repent} two of the very commonest plants in the United Kingdom. It derives its importance in Irish eyes from the legend that St. Patrick plucked a leaf of it to illustrate the Holy Trinity—the "Tria functa in uno. n But it appears there are other claimants besides the trefoil for the honour. The wood-sorrel would have answered the same purpose, and was actually called the"ahamrog" by the oldest herba-

lists. Another competitor .is the black nonsuch (medicago), which according to one authority ia largely sold sn Dublin on St. Patrick's Day as "the national badge.' Strangest of all is the fact that the watercress was called shamrock in Queen Elizabeth's reign, at any rate in the Border Country. The Pall Mall Gazette suggests that the Irish patriots should therefore take to the watercress as their emblem, principally on the ground that it is " a notable cooler of the blood when it becomes overheated." But this, of course, la merely a wicked Saxon gibe.