Martinsburg Gazette

The Musical Idiot—There is at present in the Salpetriere (at Paris) a girl idiotic to an extreme degree, who does not speak, and cannot even dress herself. However her keeper has recently discovered in her a decided taste for music, and a more than ordinary aptitude for retaining and repeating airs. She often can repeat faithfully a whole passage of music played or sung to her only once; more than this, even if the passage be left incomplete, in repeating it she will terminate it in the right key and tone. A first rate performer on the piano was brought to play to her, and her transports almost amounted to frenzy. At certain passages of rapid transitions from flats to sharps, she uttered cries of transport, and commenced eating her fingers to calm her emotions. She is an immense eater, and greedily snatches at fruit if presented to her; but if, at the moment when she is about to put them into her mouth, she hears the sound of the instrument, she suddenly stops, and does not commence eating until the music has ceased. An able phrenologist, who has examined her head, has not found the corresponding bump of music developed.