A FEAT OF MEMORY.

Manawatu Herald, Volume II, Issue 87, 25 June 1880, Page 3

A FEAT OF MEMORY.

Correspondent in America writes to " Nature" ae'fbllbws :—lhe following feat of memory seems to be worthy of recrod in your pages. It is new to the writer, though by no means uncommon over here. Like the country itself; many institutions in the United States run to size in a way apt to astonish the dwellers in our 'tight little island. 1 Sfo it is with Hotels/ Thus, at some of. them many ,huri. peds of persons are simultaneously dining in one room. At- the eutrance the hats, &., of the guests are deposi ted with a person in attendance to receive them. He does not check or arrange them in any particular 01 dea, . aud he* invariably restores them each to the right owner, .as- they emerge from the dining-room. The difficulty of the feat neturally depends on the number of hats in charge at the same ; time. -The most remarkable case which ias come under the notice 'ot the writer is at the Fifh- Avenue Hotel, New York, There the attendant, who is on duty several hours a day, and has as many as 500 hftts in possession at one time. A majority of them belong to people whom he has never seen qefore, and there is a constant flux of persons in and out. Yet even 1 a momentary hesitation* in the right hat rarely occurs. 1 The performer at the above hotel says -^Ibat <he forma a mental piotuie of the owner's face inside the hat, and that on looking at any hat the wearer's face is instantly brought before his mind's eye* It would be interesting to test how far this power is possessed by an average unpractised person when put in the right way of doing it. "While many of our ordinary recollections are not visual at least not consciously so, it appears probable that most cases of extraordinary memory consist in an unusual power of making and retaining vifiiwl'zed impressions."