| Altitude | 43 | feet |
| Mean Distance between each Wave | 559 | " |
| Width from Crest to Crest | 600 | " |
| Interval of Time between each wave | 16 | seconds |
| Velocity of each Wave per hour | 32-1/2 | miles. |
HOW TO KILL CLEVER CHILDREN.[24]
At any time in life, excessive and continued mental exertion is hurtful; but in infancy and early youth, when the structure of the brain is still immature and delicate, permanent injury is more easily produced by injudicious treatment than at any subsequent period. In this respect, the analogy is complete between the brain and the other parts of the body, as is exemplified in the injurious effects of premature exercise of the bones and muscles. Scrofulous and rickety children are the most usual sufferers in this way. They are generally remarkable for large heads, great precocity of understanding, and small, delicate bodies. But in such instances, the great size of the brain, and the acuteness of the mind, are the results of morbid growth, and even with the best management, the child passes the first years of its life constantly on the brink of active disease. Instead, however, of trying to repress its mental activity, as they should, the fond parents, misled by the promise of genius, too often excite it still further by unceasing cultivation and the never-failing stimulus of praise; and finding its progress, for a time, equal to their warmest wishes, they look forward with ecstasy to the day when its talents will break forth and shed a lustre on their name. But in exact proportion as the picture becomes brighter to their fancy, the probability of its becoming realized becomes less; for the brain, worn out by premature exertion, either becomes diseased or loses its tone, leaving the mental powers feeble and depressed for the remainder of life. The expected prodigy is thus, in the end, easily outstripped in the social race by many whose dull outset promised him an easy victory.
To him who takes for his guide the necessities of the constitution, it will be obvious that the modes of treatment commonly resorted to should in such cases be reversed; and that, instead of straining to the utmost the already irritable powers of the precocious child, leaving his dull competitors to ripen at leisure, a systematic attempt ought to be made, from early infancy, to rouse to action the languid faculties of the latter, while no pains should be spared to moderate and give tone to the activity of the former. But instead of this, the prematurely intelligent child is generally sent to school, and tasked with lessons at an unusually early age, while the healthy but more backward boy, who requires to be stimulated, is kept at home in idleness merely on account of his backwardness. A double error is here committed, and the consequences to the active-minded boy are not unfrequently the permanent loss both of health and of his envied superiority of intellect.
In speaking of children of this description, Dr. Brigham, in an excellent little work on the influence of mental excitement on health, remarks as follows: "Dangerous forms of scrofulous disease among children have repeatedly fallen under my observation, for which I could not account in any other way than by supposing that the brain had been excited at the expense of the other parts of the system, and at a time in life when nature is endeavoring to perfect all the organs of the body; and after the disease commenced, I have seen, with grief, the influence of the same cause in retarding or preventing recovery. I have seen several affecting and melancholy instances of children, five or six years of age, lingering a while with diseases from which those less gifted readily recover, and at last dying, notwithstanding the utmost efforts to restore them. During their sickness they constantly manifested a passion for books and mental excitement, and were admired for the maturity of their minds. The chance for the recovery of such precocious children is, in my opinion, small when attacked by disease; and several medical men have informed me that their own observations had led them to form the same opinion, and have remarked that, in two cases of sickness, if one of the patients was a child of superior and highly-cultivated mental powers, and the other one equally sick, but whose mind had not been excited by study, they should feel less confident of the recovery of the former than of the latter. This mental precocity results from an unnatural development of one organ of the body at the expense of the constitution."
There can be little doubt but that ignorance on the part of parents and teachers, is the principal cause that leads to the too early and excessive cultivation of the minds of children, and especially of such as are precocious and delicate. Hence the necessity of imparting instruction on this subject to both parents and teachers, and to all persons who are in any way charged with the care and education of the young. This necessity becomes the more imperative from the fact that the cupidity of authors and publishers has led to the preparation of "children's books," many of which are announced as purposely prepared "for children from two to three years old!" I might instance advertisements of "Infant Manuals" of botany, geometry, and astronomy!
In not a few isolated families, but in many neighborhoods, villages, and cities, in various parts of the country, children under three years of age are not only required to commit to memory many verses, texts of Scripture, and stories, but are frequently sent to school for six hours a day. Few children are kept back later than the age of four, unless they reside a great distance from school, and some not even then. At home, too, they are induced by all sorts of excitements to learn additional tasks, or peruse juvenile books and magazines, till the nervous system becomes enfeebled, and the health broken. "I have myself," says Dr. Brigham, "seen many children who are supposed to possess almost miraculous mental powers, experiencing these effects and sinking under them. Some of them died early, when but six or eight years of age, but manifested to the last a maturity of understanding, which only increased the agony of separation. Their minds, like some of the fairest flowers were "no sooner blown than blasted;" others have grown up to manhood, but with feeble bodies and disordered nervous system, which subjected them to hypochondriasis, dyspepsy, and all the Protean forms of nervous disease; others of the class of early prodigies exhibit in manhood but small mental powers, and are the mere passive instruments of those who in early life were accounted far their inferiors."
This hot-bed system of education is not confined to the United States, but is practiced less or more in all civilized countries. Dr. Combe, of Scotland, gives an account of one of these early prodigies, whose fate he witnessed. The circumstances were exactly such as those above described. The prematurely developed intellect was admired, and constantly stimulated by injudicious praise, and by daily exhibition to every visitor who chanced to call. Entertaining books were thrown in its way, reading by the fireside encouraged, play and exercise neglected, the diet allowed to be full and heating, and the appetite pampered by every delicacy. The results were the speedy deterioration of a weak constitution, a high degree of nervous sensibility, deranged digestion, disordered bowels, defective nutrition, and, lastly, death, at the very time when the interest excited by the mental precocity was at its height.
Such, however, is the ignorance of the majority of parents and teachers on all physiological subjects, that when one of these infant prodigies dies from erroneous treatment, it is not unusual to publish a memoir of his life, that other parents and teachers may see by what means such transcendent qualities were called forth. Dr. Brigham refers to a memoir of this kind, in which the history of a child, aged four years and eleven months, is narrated as approved by "several judicious persons, ministers and others, all of whom united in the request that it might be published, and all agreed in the opinion that a knowledge of the manner in which the child was treated, together with the results, would be profitable to both parents and children, and a benefit to the cause of education." This infant philosopher was "taught hymns before he could speak plainly;" "reasoned with," and constantly instructed until his last illness, which, "without any assignable cause," put on a violent and unexpected form, and carried him off!