subjects, excited the utmost astonishment in those who were acquainted with her limited means of acquiring information.
"She had been known to conjugate correctly Latin verbs, which she had probably heard in the school-room of the family, and she was once heard to speak several sentences very correctly in French, at the same time stating that she had heard them from a foreign gentleman whom she had met accidentally in a shop. Being questioned on this subject when awake, she remembered having seen the gentleman, but could not repeat a word of what he had said.
"During her paroxysms it was almost impossible to awake her, and when her eylids were raised and a candle brought near the eye, the pupil seemed insensible to the light. For several years she was, during the paroxysm, entirely unconscious of the presence of other persons, but about the age of sixteen, she began to observe those who were in the apartment, and she could tell correctly their number though the utmost care was taken to have the room darkened. She now also became capable of answering questions that were put to her, and of noticing remarks made in her presence, and, with regard to both, she showed astonishing acuteness. Her observations indeed were often of such a nature and corresponded so accurately with character and events, that, by the country people, she was believed to be endowed with supernatural power.
"During the whole period of this remarkable affection, which seems to have gone on for at least ten or eleven years, she was, when awake, a dull awkward girl, very slow in receiving any kind of instruction, though much care was bestowed upon her; and in point of intellect, she was much inferior to the other servants of the family. In particular, she showed no kind of turn for music. She did not appear to have any recollection of what passed in her sleep; but during her nocturnal ramblings, she was more than once heard to lament her infirmity of speaking in her sleep, adding how fortunate it was she did not sleep among the other servants, as they teased her enough about it as it was."
Dr. Dewar also relates the "case of an ignorant servant-girl, who, during the paroxysm of somnambulism, showed an astonishing knowledge of geography and astronomy, and expressed herself, in her own language, in a manner which, though often ludicrous, showed an understanding of the subject. The alteration of the seasons, for example, she explained by saying the world was set a gee."
Dr. Macnish, in "The Philosophy of Sleep," has moreover given us the following cases:—"A female servant in the town of Chelmsford, surprised the family, at four o'clock one morning, by walking down a
