106 Inquiries into Human Faculty
explanation without attaching too much importance to it, because it seems to me that if it was true, my direct recollection of those coloured borders ‘would have been stronger than it is; still, the strong association of my chronology with colour seems to plead in favour of that explanation."
Figs. 66, 67. These two are selected out of a large collection of coloured Forms in which the months of the year are visualised. They will illustrate the gorgeousness of the mental imagery of some favoured persons. Of these Fig. 66 is by the wife of an able London physician, and Fig. 67 is by Mrs. Kempe Welch, whose sister, Miss Bevington, a wellknown and thoughtful writer, also sees coloured imagery in connection with dates. This Fig. 67 was one of my test cases, repeated after the lapse of two years, and quite satisfactorily. The first communication was a descriptive account, partly in writing, partly by word of mouth; the second, on my asking for it, was a picture which agreed perfectly with the description, and explained much that I had not understood at the time. The small size of the Fig. in the Plate makes it impossible to do justice to the picture, which is elaborate and on a large scale; with a perspective of similar hills stretching away to the far distance, and each standing for a separate year. She writes
“It is rather difficult to give it fully without making it too definite; on each side there is a total blank.”
The instantaneous association of colour with sound characterises a small percentage of adults, and it appears to be rather common, though in an ill-developed degree, among children. I can here appeal not only to my own collection of facts, but to those of others, for the subject has latterly excited some interest in Germany. The first widely known case was that of the brothers Nussbaumer, published in 1873 by Professor Bruhl of Vienna, of which the English reader will find an account in the last volume of Lewis’s Problems of Life and Mind (p. 280). Since then many occasional notices of similar associations have appeared. A pamphlet containing numerous cases was published in Leipsic in 1881 by two Swiss investigators,
