Phenomenal Memories.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXX, Issue 7, 13 February 1902, Page 13

Phenomenal Memories.

MANY of the greatest men have had phenomenal memories (says Professor E. S. Holden). Caesar knew tho names of thousands of soldiers in his legion. A modern man of science often has a prodigious memory for special terminology. Professor Asa Gray asserted that he could at once recall the names of something like 25,000 plants ; Professor Theodore Gill can do the- same for fishes. Our memory for mere words is itself much more extensive than is generally admitted. The average well to do child of two years has a vocabulary of some 500 words, and its father may t , have the command of 20,000 more. The 10,000 verses of the Rig Veda have, for 3000 years, been accurately preserved in the memories of the Brahmins. Not one Brahmin alone, but thousands can to-day recite it word for word. Thousands of Mohammedans likewise know the Koran by heart, as all learned Chinese know their classic books. The chiefs of Polynesia can and do repeat hundreds of thousands of words in their genealogies taking days and even weeks for the recitation. Hundreds of pianists can play all day, and many days, by memory, and I have myself seen Von Bulow conduct Beethoven's Fifth Symphony without a score. Chessplayers have a visualising memory ; musicians have an auditive and a motor memory ; while arithmetical prodigies may have any one of the three or a combination of all.