Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 42.djvu/526

508 no adequate explanation of their mathematical agility. This hypothesis is further weakened by the recently developed fact that Inaudi, the ruling French mathematical wonder, is not a visionnaire at all, but a distinct auditaire who hears all his numbers.

Referring now to the accompanying forms, Figs. 1, 2, and 4 demand no further explanation. In Fig. 3 we have an interesting double form, the one to the left showing how the numbers from 1 to 15 appear when thought of by themselves or in connection with one another. But when any number below 15 is thought of in connection with any number above 15, it is seen as shown in the form to the right. Above 15 the numbers are unalterably fixed. The possessor of this form writes me as follows:

Among the seventy-five young men and women interrogated in the first experiment, was a rather diffident young woman who communicated to a classmate that while, she had no number form, there were certain associations that she always made with the nine digitis. Learning this, I questioned her, and she consented to write out the associations, which I reproduce here exactly as given:

1 = a child about two years old.

2 = a boy, ten or twelve years old, brown hair and eyes, frank, active, noisy, always ready to help.

3 = a girl, short hair, black, curly; sharp features, not pretty; slight; awful temper; shrill voice; bangs and slams around generally.