Miss Cogan’s memory of the tune, might be compared to birds singing, or some instinctive ‹or› sounds.— Miss C. memory cannot be called memory, because she did not remembered, it was an habitual action of thought- secreting organs, brought into play by morbid action.—¹ Old Elspeth’s «in Antiquary» power of repeating poetry in her dotage is fact of same sort.² Aunt. B. ditto.—³



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1. See Darwin’s personal copy of Abercrombie 1838: 143, for his marginal notation, ‘These cases like Miss Cogans, & serve to show that affections of brain will recall facts in ‹those› an individual life after long periods.—’ The accompanying passage of Abercrombie 1838:143, reads, ‘A case has been related to me of a boy, who, at the age of four, received a fracture of the skull, for which he underwent the operation of trepan. He was at the time in a state of perfect stupor, and, after his recovery, retained no recollection either of the accident or the operation. At the age of fifteen, during the delerium of a fever he gave his mother an account of the operation . . .’ Darwin made a pencil score beside the passage. 2. Walter Scott 1815, 3:220, ‘. . . shrill tremulous voice of Elspeth chaunting forth an old ballad in a wild and doleful recitative . . .’ 3. Aunt Bessey: Elizabeth Wedgwood.

Transcription and apparatus copyright the American Museum of Natural History