irginian slave of the eighteenth century, although
illiterate, gave the number of seconds in 7 years 17 days 12 hours after
only a minute and a half of thought. Jedediah Buxton, an Englishman of the
eighteenth century, was studied by the Royal Society because of his
remarkable powers. Ampere, the physicist, made long calculations with
pebbles at the age of four. Gauss, one of the few infant prodigies to
become an adult prodigy, corrected his father's payroll at the age of
three. One of the most remarkable of the French calculating boys was Henri
Mondeux. He was investigated by Arago, Sturm, Cauchy, and Liouville, for
the Academie des Sciences, and a report was written by Cauchy. His
specialty was the solution of algebraic problems mentally. He seems to have
calculated squares and cubes by a binomial formula of his own invention. He
died in obscurity, but was the subject of a _Biographie_ by Jacoby (1846).
George P. Bidder, the Scotch engineer (1806-1878), was exhibited as an
arithmetical prodigy at the age of ten, and did not attend school until he
was twelve. Of the recent cases two deserve special mention, Inaudi and
Diamandi. Jacques Inaudi (born in 1867) was investigated for the Academie
in 1892 by a commission including Poincare, Charcot, and Binet. (See the
_Revue des Deux Mondes_, June 15, 1892, and the laboratory bulletins of the
Sorbonne). He has frequently exhibited his remarkable powers in America.
Pericles Diamandi was investigated by the same commission in 1893. See
Alfred Binet, _Psychologie des Grands Calculateurs et Joueurs d'Echecs_,
Paris, 1894.

[133] John Flamsteed's (1646-1719) "old white house" was the first
Greenwich observatory. He was the Astronomer Royal and first head of this
observatory.

[134] It seems a pity that De Morgan should not have lived to lash those of
our time who are demanding only the immediately practical in mathematics.
His satire would have been worth the reading against those who seek to
stifle the science they pretend to foster.

[135] Ismael Bouillaud, or Boulliau, was born in 1605 and died at Paris in
1694. He was well known as an astronomer, mathematician, and jurist. He
lived with De Thou at Paris, and accompanied him to Holland. He traveled
extensively, and was versed in the astronomical work of the Persians and
Arabs. It was in his _Astronomia philolaica, opus novum_ (Paris, 1645) that
he attacked Kepler's laws. His tables were shown to be erroneous by the
fact that