96 galton.org
96
Inquiries into Human Faculty
express themselves. The last belongs to one of the Charter-house boys, the
others respectively to a musical critic, to a clergyman, and to a gentleman
who is, I believe, now a barrister.
DESCRIPTION OF PLATE II
Plate II. contains examples of more complicated Forms, which
severally require so much minuteness of description that I am in despair
of being able to do justice to them separately, and must leave most of
them to tell their own story.
Fig. 34 is that of Mr. Flinders Petrie, to which I have already referred
(p.66).
Fig. 37 is by Professor Herbert M’Leod, F.R.S. I will quote his letter
almost in full, as it is a very good example
“When your first article on visualised numerals appeared in Nature, I thought of
writing to tell you of my own case, of which I had never previously spoken to any one, and
which I never contemplated putting on paper. It becomes now a duty to me to do so, for it
is a fourth case of the influence of the clock-face. [In my article I had spoken of only three
cases known to me.—F. G.] The enclosed paper will give you a rough notion of the
apparent positions of numbers in my mind. That it is due to learning the clock is, I think,
proved by my being able to tell the clock certainly before I was four, and probably when
little more than three, but my mother cannot tell me the exact date. I had a habit of
arranging my spoon and fork on my plate to indicate the positions of the hands, and I well
remember being astonished at seeing an old watch of my grandmother’s which had
ordinary numerals in place of Roman ones. All this happened before I could read, and I
have no recollection of learning the numbers unless it was by seeing numbers stencilled on
the barrels in my father’s brewery.
“When learning the numbers from 12 to 20, they appeared to be vertically above the
12 of the clock, and you will see from the enclosed sketch that the most prominent
numbers which I have underlined all occur in the multiplication table. Those doubly
underlined are the most prominent [the lithographer has not rendered these correctly.—F.
G.], and just now I caught myself doing what I did not anticipate—after doubly
underlining some of the numbers, I found that all the multiples of 12 except 84 are so
marked. In the sketch I have written in all the numbers up to 30; the others are not added
merely for want of space; they
