Note 32 — 1848.

This year was enlisted a calculating youth named Alexander Gwin, a native of Londonderry, who had a brother and an uncle in the corps. When only eight years of age, he had “committed to memory the logarithms of all the natural numbers from one to a thousand.” Two years later, his fame having spread, his precocity was tested at Limerick “in the presence of Colonel Colby, Lord Adare, and several other gentlemen of distinction,” to whom he repeated the whole series, without a mistake, taking up two hours and a half to deliver himself of that gigantic mental effort! “His rapidity and correctness in calculating trigonometrical distances, triangles, &c.” were equally remarkable. “In less than one minute, he could make a return in acres, roods, perches, &c., of any quantity of land, by giving him the surveyor’s chained distances; while,” it is added, “the greatest mathematician with all his knowledge would certainly take nearly an hour to do the same, and not be sure of truth in the end.”—‘Year-Book of Facts,’ 1842. ‘Boys’ Own Book,’ p. 381, published by Bogue. This calculating boy, making allowance for the hyperbole of his admirers, was without doubt a youthful prodigy. He is now a corporal on the survey, useful and energetic in his duties; but as the opportunities for improving his faculty for figures have been considerably lessened by the nature of his employments, he has not become what his infantine capabilities promised—another Bidder.