JUVENILE PRECOCITY.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1486, 8 July 1912, Page 9

JUVENILE PRECOCITY.

"THE LEARNED BOY OF LUBECK." The most remarkable case of juvenile prococity on record (fays, the "Daily Chronicle") is that of Christian Henrv Heinecker, the "learned boy of Lubeck, 1 ' born in 1721, who could read before ho was ono year old, and could write before he was three. Before completing his first twelve, he could recite all the principal events in Biblieftl history, and before he •was four ho "knew" tho history of all tho nations of antiquity, geography, anatomy, and the use of maps, ecclesiastical history, and the doctrines of divinity. He spoko German, Latin, French, and Butch. And at the age of four years four months ho died. This is a warning to all young children. You can die of an excess of knowledge. Professor Wilne, of Harvard, is tho proud father of a precocious infant. Last year he told an interviewer that "when my boy Norhert was eighteen months old, his nurso ono day' -amused herself by making. letters in the sand of tho seashore. She noticed that ho was walchiujr hor attentively, and in -fun begun to teach him tho alphabet. Two days afterwards sho told me, in great surprise, that he- knew it perfectly. I s-tarled leaching him how to spell at the age of three. In a very few weeks he was reading quito fluently, and by sis was acquainted with a. number of excellent books, including works by Darwin, Tlibo't, and other scientists, which I had put in. his hands in order to instil in him something of tho scientific spirit.-" ' And nqw we want to hear how Norhert throvo on the' diet.