Among strange mental feats the strangest perhaps yet recorded are the
following singular feats of memory for sound, related in the _Scientific
American_. In the city of Rochester, N. Y., resides a boy named Hicks,
who, though he has only lately removed from Buffalo to Rochester, has
already learned to distinguish three hundred locomotive engines by the
sound of their bells. During the day the boy is employed so far from the
railway that he seldom hears a passing train; but at night he can hear
every train, his house being near the railroad. To give an idea of his
wonderful memory for sounds (and his scarcely less wonderful memory for
numbers also) take the following cases. Not long ago young Hicks went to
Syracuse, and while there, he, hearing an engine coming out of the
round-house, remarked to a friend that he knew the bell, though he had
not heard it for five years: he gave the number of the engine, which
proved to be correct. Again, not long since, an old switch-engine, used
in the yards at Buffalo, was sent to Rochester for some special purpose.
It passed near Hicks’ house, and he remarked that the engine was number
so and so, and that he had not heard the bell for six years. A boarder
in the house ran to the railroad, and found the number given by Hicks was
the correct one. To most persons the bells on American locomotives seem
all much alike in sound and _timbre_, though, of course, a good ear will
readily distinguish differences, especially between bells which are
sounded within a short interval of time. But that anyone should be able
in the first place to discriminate between two or three hundred of these
bells, and in the second place to retain the recollection of the slight
peculiarities characterising each for several years, would seem
altogether incredible, had we not other instances—such as Bidder’s and
Colburn’s calculating feats, Morphy’s blindfold chess-play, etc.—of the
amazing degree in which one brain may surpass all others in some special
quality, though perhaps, in other respects, not exceptionally powerful,
or even relatively deficient.
—_Gentleman’s Magazine_, March 1880.