, there are
experts who are really physiologic curiosities. In the trades and
arts we see development of the special senses that is little less
than marvelous. It is said that there are workmen in Krupp's gun
factory in Germany who have such control over the enormous trip
hammers that they can place a watch under one and let the hammer
fall, stopping it with unerring precision just on the crystal. An
expert tool juggler in one of the great English needle factories,
in a recent test of skill, performed one of the most delicate
mechanical feats imaginable. He took a common sewing needle of
medium size (length 1 5/8 inches) and drilled a hole through its
entire length from eye to point--the opening being just large
enough to admit the passage of a very fine hair. Another workman
in a watch-factory of the United States drilled a hole through a
hair of his beard and ran a fiber of silk through it.
Ventriloquists, or "two-voiced men," are interesting anomalies of
the present day; it is common to see a person who possesses the
power of speaking with a voice apparently from the epigastrium.
Some acquire this faculty, while with others it is due to a
natural resonance, formed, according to Dupont, in the space
between the third and fourth ribs and their cartilaginous union
and the middle of the first portion of the sternum.
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